Questionable at first. But this guy has been an ALL STAR assistant wherever he has gone. I maintain that I want a straight up nerd offensive strategist for the OC hire. But, I will admit that the idea of Coley is pretty intriguing to me and would be a very creative hire IMO.
Recruiting wise, he is one of the best in the game, especially in South Florida. That is a given and would be huge because of how significantly it both bolsters our recruiting efforts and completely destroys our biggest rivals recruiting efforts (especially in trying to get into South Florida).
Additionally you won't convince that this guy doesn't know offense. Why was he promoted to OC and not Eddie Gran? Both were big time assistants, both monster recruiters, but Coley got the nod. Tommy Tuberville, a solid CFB coach, just hired Eddie Gran to be the OC at Cinci. Will he succeed? I don't know, but I do know that a coach who has won a lot of football games just hired Gran to run his offense. I find it interesting that while both about equally lethal as recruiters, it was Coley who got the promotion to aid Jimbo in running the offense. Additionally, when Stoops got his SEC HC job at Kentucky, his first choice for OC was Coley.
Jimbo calls the plays (the big negative/unknown on him), but Jimbo does not create the playbook by himself and he does not scout defenses by himself and he does not create gameplans by himself and he does not make adjustments by himself. All this leads me to believe that Coley is more than just a recruiter and knows football. If that isn't enough convincing, the fact that this guy has been a position coach at the NFL (for Saban) tells me what Saban thinks of him. Saban did not bring him to coach in the NFL because of his recruiting, obviously. The fact that he was also a quality control assistant in the NFL is huge IMO because that is basically encompasses every facet of the offense except the actual in-game play calling. Whipple was a quality control offensive assistant with the Eagles before becoming our OC. He wasn't the best, but he was def a capable offensive mind.
Furthermore, if there is one person I would trust to evaluate Coley as an OC, it would be the one HC who had him as an OC, Mario Cristobal. That guy just happens to be on our staff. If Golden hires Coley, then I'm excited about the hire because it means A.) he impressed Golden in the same way that Fisch (now NFL OC) and McDonald (now D1 OC) impressed Golden and B.) Cristobal fully believes in him as an OC. And for those that want to throw out that FIU's offense was no good in 2007, I'll say nothing about FIU was good in 2007, it was their 3rd season in FBS (D1A), they lost every game the season before and averaged 9ppg on offense. No matter how bad it looked in comparison to real FBS level teams, FIU at least jumped up to 15 ppg with Coley at the helm and some big scoring games towards the end of the season.
The recruiting coup this would cause this year and into the future paired with the reality that Coley is a very experienced and respected offensive assistant has me VERY intrigued by this.
