Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Mitch Browning is the New Offensive Line Coach

Shortly after firing three assistant coaches following the regular season, Kyle Flood filled one of his staff vacancies before the bowl game by tabbing Mitch Browning as his new offensive line coach. Browning, who spent the 2013 season at FCS Davidson, was afforded the opportunity to observe his position group through out bowl preparation, just to get some idea of what the group he will be coaching next year will look like. Browning has an unusual resume, having a lot of success early in his career and not so much as of late, but I think this is a pretty solid hire.

Browning began his career spending 21 mostly successful seasons as an assistant under Glenn Mason, coaching a variety of positions for him at Kent State, Kansas and Minnesota. With the Golden Gophers, he coached the offensive line and eventually earned coordinator duties. Minnesota had one of the best rushing attacks in the country while he was there, and they set a Big 10 record for total yards in a season in 2003 with 6,430 yards. He was a finalist for the Broyals award given to the nation's top assistant for his work that year.  His lines were very good, but it's worth mentioning that Marion Barber III and Lawrence Maroney were Minnesota's running backs at this time.

Following Mason's dismissal from Minnesota after the most epic bowl collapse of all time in 2006, Browning has been unable to land a stable job. Since his time with the Gophers ended, he has served one season as the offensive coordinator at Syracuse (2008), one season as the co-offensive line coach at Tennessee (2009), two seasons as the offensive line coach at Akron (2010-11), one season at Division 2 Ashland and the one season at Davidson. That recent history isn't exactly inspiring, but Flood chalked up these career difficulties to his lack of connections in the coaching industry after spending so much time with Mason. That at least makes some sense.

Browning has been a proponent of the zone blocking scheme Flood prefers (which Rutgers actually went away from a lot in 2013), and you can watch some cut ups of his offenses running inside (Demarcus Ware cameo at 2:23) and outside zone plays from his time at Minnesota if you are interested. It looks like he teaches cut blocking. I love that.

For what it's worth, Mason praised his old colleague, calling him "(his) best coach and best recruiter. A rare combination." Browning has been known to be very good in the player development department, and that is probably the most important thing for offensive line coaches, since offensive lineman face the biggest transition of any position going from high school to college ball. And if he can improve recruiting, that would be gravy, since Rutgers has missed out on a lot of their offensive line targets in recent years, with 2012 of course being the exception.

Despite the uninspiring recent history, I think Browning is a pretty solid hire. He was a very good offensive line coach at Minnesota, and that Big10 experience will of course be very valuable moving forward. Rutgers has had trouble running the football for quite a few years now, and Browning's previous work at least provides some hope for improvement this year, even with the step up in competition.

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