Could Nine Of Brown’s 10 Assistant Coaching Slots Be Filled?

Could Nine Of Brown’s 10 Assistant Coaching Slots Be Filled?

MORGANTOWN, W.Va.–West Virginia’s new head football coach Neal Brown said last Thursday at his introductory press conference in Morgantown that he wasn’t going to rush the hiring of his staff at WVU.

“It’s more important to get it right than get it done quickly,” said Brown at that time.

That said, it does appear the new leader of the Mountaineer football program is assembling his coaching staff in fairly short order.

In the last few days, WVU has officially announced the hiring of four assistants – Vic Koenning (defensive coordinator), Matt Moore (offensive line), Jordan Lesley (defensive line), Sean Reagan (quarterbacks_ and Chad Scott (likely running backs).

Brown seems  ready to make further moves with his staff, as well, though that at this point, none have been announced officially.

Footballscoop.com reported that another assistant for Brown at Troy – cornerbacks coach Al Pogue – is also going to follow the former Trojan head coach to WVU. Koenning, Moore, Reagan and Lesley had been members of Troy’s staff in recent years as well, while Scott had been the tight ends coach last season at North Carolina.

In addition, several Internet sites in Minnesota are reporting that Gopher defensive back coach Jahmile Addae was going to accept an assistant coaching job at West Virginia. Addae was a safety for the Mountaineers from 2001-05 (he medically redshirted in 2004). He then got into coaching, serving as a G.A. at WVU in 2007 and also at Michigan in 2008-09. A native of Valrico, Fla., Addae previously held full-time assistant jobs at Cincinnati (2010-11), Arizona (2013-17) and Minnesota (2018).

Pogue is a native of Mobile, Ala., and 1998 graduate of Alabama State, where he was a three-year starting defensive back. He spent his first 13 years after graduating from Alabama State coaching in the high school ranks, most of it in the Montgomery, Ala., area. He then worked for several seasons in an administrative role at Auburn, first as an offensive quality control coach and then as the football program’s director of high school relations. He was hired as a full-time cornerback coach at Troy in 2014, was retained by Brown when he took over the Trojan program in 2015 and had been there through 2018. His pass defense was 56th in the FBS ranks this past year, allowing 223.9 yards per game.

A native of Conyers, Ga., Reagan is a 2008 graduate of North Georgia College. He moved into the college coaching ranks initially as a G.A. at Troy (2008-09), followed Brown for a year as a graduate assistant at Texas Tech (2010) and then returned to Troy as quarterback coach in 2011. He had been with the Trojans ever since. As well as overseeing Troy’s quarterbacks, he was also in charge of the program’s running backs from 2015-17. Despite an injury to the Trojans’ starting quarterback, Kaleb Barker, Troy still averaged 215.3 passing yards per game this past season, 69th in the FBS.

The official website for the WVU athletic department reflects some of these additions; Brown, Koenning, Moore, Lesley and Scott are all listed. The bios of all the other coaches from Dana Holgorsen’s previous staff have been removed except for two – tight ends coach Dan Gerberry and linebacker/special teams coach Mark Scott. There is no other confirmation that Gerberry and Scott are being retained by Brown, but certainly their presence on an otherwise expunged webpage very well could be an indication that each will remain at West Virginia. Veteran strength coach Mike Joseph also is still listed, which would follow with other reports that he would be retained by Brown.

So if the four assistants officially in place are joined by the five other possibilities (Addae, Pogue, Reagan, Gerberry and Scott), nine of the 10 assistant coaching jobs on Brown’s staff would be filled. It would seem a wide receiver coach would be the final need to round out Brown’s new coaching staff.