Rutgers will have their fifth different offensive coordinator in five years in 2014, as Ron Prince has left to become the tight ends coach and assistant head coach of the Detroit Lions. Prince will re-join new head coach Jim Caldwell in Detroit, after he had previously coached under him with the Indianapolis Colts from 2010-2011.
When Prince was hired, I wrote that while he is a pretty good offensive coordinator, Rutgers needed someone who was very good working with quarterbacks, and that proved to be accurate. Prince did a good job preparing the offense and calling plays, but the quarterback problems were ultimately too much for the unit to over come. The Scarlet Knight offense was great through the first five games of the season, but fizzled out towards the middle and late portion of the season as Gary Nova regressed and there were no viable alternatives to him.
I liked that Prince tried to keep the offense balanced and spread the ball around to different receivers, and was looking forward to see if he could develop someone at quarterback now that he had added QB coaching duties, but it wasn't to be. It seemed like Prince would stick around for more than one year when he was hired, but he was making a pretty low salary for a BCS level coordinator, and it's not terribly surprising to see him leave.
Prince's departure has already hurt Rutgers, as the vacancy at offensive coordinator led to Rutgers' top committed prospect --wide receiver Saeed Blacknall of Manalapan, NJ-- to flip his commitment to Penn State. Often times, you will see college assistants wait until after national signing day to leave for NFL jobs (this happened when Schiano took a lot of Rutgers assistants with him to Tampa), but that unfortunately did not happen here.
Prince was a good coach on the banks, but Rutgers has actually upgraded at offensive coordinator in wake of his departure. More to come on that.....
No comments:
Post a Comment