Cal Football Report: OLB coach Heyward is expected to become the new defensive coordinator at UNLV
Heyward and head coach Marcus Arroyo coached together at Oregon, where he was a Co-DC.
The departure of Heyward for promotion to UNLV DC makes an opening on the Cal staff. This is the second departure from the Wilcox staff this offseason (previously ST Coach Ragle took the Idaho St. HC job).
With this opening Wilcox can either replace the OLB coach with a new one, (fun fact: Andre Carter coached at LSU last season, so maybe that might be the angle). Other option is to hire a full-time ST coach (in-house option is Michael Barton, former Cal OLB, is the ST QC and could be promoted), re-assign the OLBs to Browning or Sirmon.
Coach Heyward joined the Cal staff in 2021 as the OLB coach after leaving Oregon where he coached 4 seasons.
Thoughts?
I say find a young energetic coach that is an excellent teacher and has recruiting chops. I feel the open position should be used to fill the OLB spot as that is such a critical piece of the dominant Cal defense. I think Wilcox probably has a short list of very good candidates. Go Bears!!
UNLV now has Marcus Arroyo as HC, Nate Longshore as TE coach, Kenwick Thompson as LB coach and Heyward as DC. They are little Cal just like we are Oregon 2.0