Jan. 12—Special teams coordinator Stacy Collins will leave Penn State to become assistant head coach, special teams coordinator and linebackers coach at Boise State, according to a report Friday by Adam Rittenberg of ESPN.
An Oregon native, Collins spent his entire football coaching career in the Northwest before leaving Boise State to join the Nittany Lions staff in 2022.
Collins became the third coordinator to leave Penn State since head coach James Franklin fired offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich in mid-November. Defensive coordinator Manny Diaz resigned in December to become head coach at Duke.
Franklin hired Kansas offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki to replace Yurcich and former Indiana head coach Tom Allen to replace Diaz.
Under Collins’ direction, Penn State finished sixth this past season in net punting, 21st in kickoff returns, 22nd in kickoff return defense, 24th in punt return defense and 32nd in punt returns. In addition, Alex Felkins made 19-f-of-24 field goal attempts (.792), which ranked 45th nationally.
All those numbers were improvements over what the Lions did in 2022, his first season. Penn State, however, allowed three blocked kicks and one blocked punt. They also blocked one kick and one punt.
In 2022, Penn State’s Chris Stoll won the Patrick Mannelly Award as the nation’s outstanding long snapper.
Possible candidates to replace Collins include former Indiana special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach Kasey Teegardin, who was on the Hoosiers staff with Allen from 2016 until they were fired in December.
Internal candidates include offensive analyst Calvin Lowry, the former Penn State safety who coached special teams at Tulsa from 2015-22, and special teams analyst Eric Raisbeck.
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/penn-state-special-teams-coordinator-044900498.html
Author : Reading Eagle, Pa.
Publish date : 2024-01-13 04:49:00
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