BY REID CONANT
If you haven’t heard the news, Colorado hired a new football coach yesterday afternoon and his introductory press conference happened this morning.
His name is Mel Tucker, and his resumé is pretty damn impressive. Tucker will be coming from the University of Georgia, as he served as the defensive coordinator under Kirby Smart for the last three years. Now let’s dig into his past coaching experience.
To start, Tucker had a long spell in the NFL. He coached for a total of 10 seasons in the league, seven serving as a defensive coordinator — four of those seven years were spent with the Jaguars. During his stint with Jacksonville from 2009-2012, he was also named the interim head coach in 2011. The time spent doing that is his only head coaching experience he’s had in his career, though.
Tucker also was a defensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears for two seasons (2013-2014) and the Cleveland Browns for one (2008). He’s been around great coaches in college and the NFL and ] seems to know the game.
After all, you don’t see a coach get hired by Nick Saban three times if he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Tucker was first hired by Saban back in 1997 as a graduate assistant, then hired as the defensive backs coach at LSU in 2000 and finally hired by the Crimson Tide in 2015 again as the defensive backs coach for Saban. Yes, that’s right he was hired by Nick Saban three separate times. That’s all Colorado fans need to know really. If that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will.
The best part about Tucker’s track record is that I haven’t even gotten to the best part about this coach — his recruiting. He’s one of the best in the business and it excites me about when it comes to Tucker’s ability to coach college football.
247 Sports has him ranked as the 14th best recruiter in the nation in regards to the 2018 recruiting class and he’s been ranked inside the top 20 the last three years in recruiting for Georgia. One of the biggest reasons why is because he plays a big time role in the recruiting hotbed of Florida. Tucker has gotten some big time players across the nation in his time, and his ability to connect with five-star athletes has been well documented. I mean this guy gets the best players in the country. We’re no longer talking about finding diamonds in the rough, Buff fans. We’re talking about getting the best players in the biggest states — California, Texas and Florida. This guy is no joke when it comes to recruiting.
Another positive is that this guy has been able to develop big-time NFL talent. He had the ability to coach Roquan Smith a top 10 pick in the 2018 draft and has developed an elite prospect in defensive back in DeAndre Baker the past couple years. Baker is right at the top of the 2019 big boards right now that is full of defensive talent — one that includes Nick Bosa, Devin White, Josh Allen and Quinnen Williams.
During Tucker’s time at Georgia, his defense has been one of the best in college football. In his three years at Georgia, his squad was ranked in the top 20 in every major defensive category. These include: total defense, passing defense, turnovers gained, scoring defense and first down defense. In 2017, his defense was clicking on all cylinders as they were ranked sixth nationally in scoring defense and total defense.
All in all, it’s pretty clear this guy can do it all. If you aren’t falling in love with the guy already, I don’t know what else you want. He’s always been a winner, and don’t just take my word for it, take his.
“We’re here to win championships. I’ve never been in a game, as a player or a coach, that we weren’t expecting to win. Ever. So there’s one thing that I can tell you, there’s no one on this planet that can put more pressure on me than I can put on myself. The expectations I have for this university and this program are extremely high. We’re going to start working today to get this thing going in the direction it needs to go.”
Wow. Words can’t describe how blown away I feel by this man’s expectations. Buff fans get on board, because Mel Tucker is leading us back to the top. There will be no such thing as rebuilding with this coach. He’s ready, and so are the Buffs. This team has loads of young talent and I am beyond excited to see what this guy can do with it.
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