The New Orleans Saints started the building of their defensive coaching staff with an interesting trend. The same way Kellen Moore formed his staff with a common thread of familiarity, Brandon Staley started his hirings with coaches from the college game.
Staley made several additions, all from the college ranks: defensive line coach Bo Davis, defensive pass game coordinator Terry Joseph, linebackers coach Peter Sirmon and defensive assistant Robert Blanton, who has coached safeties and cornerbacks. Surprisingly, few of these coaches have much NFL experience. Davis coached the Detroit Lions defensive line for a few years. While Joseph and Davis did work together for a few years at Texas, and Joseph overlapped with Sirmon at Tennessee more than a decade ago, Joseph is the only one of these coaches directly correlated to Staley. They were also together at Tennessee briefly once Sirmon moved on.
That’s where it gets really eye-opening. These brief connections to the NFL or Staley almost feels random. Davis being at LSU and Joseph being from Louisiana provides a degree of local ties, but there was an expectation Staley would bring former pro-level assistants to help expedite the learning process for Saints players. The only one so far is Jay Rodgers, his former defensive line coach on the Los Angeles Chargers who will be assisting Davis.
It’s not as if they’re receiving minor roles either. Joseph is the pass game coordinator, while Sirmon and Davis are the new linebackers and defensive line coaches, respectively. At least two-thirds of the positional coaches will consist of former collegiate coaches.
It’ll be interesting to see if this trend continues after the Saints return home from the NFL Scouting Combine. Half of the staff won’t come from collegiate teams, like half of the offensive staff is connected to Moore, but there may still be another collegiate coach or two the Saints could look into recruiting.
They won’t all be from the college ranks. Even if the rest of the coaches were on the NFL staffs a year ago, that is still three coaching additions who are lifetime college coaches. That would have been noteworthy even if it wasn’t the first three hirings.
