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Northern Illinois Coach Thomas Hammock Leaves School for NFL Job
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Northern Illinois head football coach Thomas Hammock is leaving the school to become the new running backs coach and senior offensive assistant for the Seattle Seahawks, according to a report from ESPN's Pete Thamel.
Hammock is expected to become the highest paid running backs coach in the NFL, and chose the Seahawks over “multiple” NFL opportunities, according to Thamel.
Hammock just completed his seventh season with the Huskies, going 35–47 as the program's coach. The most notable win of the tenure, of course, was Northern Illinois’s road upset of No. 5 Notre Dame in Sept. 2024. That Fighting Irish team would go on to play for a national championship later that season.
This is not Hammock's first stint in the NFL. He served as the running backs coach for the Ravens under John Harbaugh from 2014 to ’18 before taking over as the head coach of his alma mater NIU. Hammock's return to the NFL comes after he initially interviewed in Seattle for the vacant offensive coordinator position for the Super Bowl champion Seahawks, which was vacated by Klint Kubiak, who left the franchise to become the new head coach of the Raiders.
Despite not being named offensive coordinator, he chose to join on in Seattle anyway as the running backs coach due to the lucrative offer proposed by his former colleague, Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald, who served on staff with Hammock in Baltimore under Harbaugh.
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Mike McDaniel is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated, where he has worked since January 2022. His work has been featured at InsideTheACC.com, SB Nation, FanSided and more. McDaniel hosts the Hokie Hangover Podcast, covering Virginia Tech athletics, as well as Basketball Conference: The ACC Football Podcast. Outside of work, he is a husband and father, and an avid golfer.
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