USC Football: Trojans Reportedly Hire One of the Nation's Best Assistant Coaches
Lincoln Riley set out to improve a defense that grossly underachieved this past year.
After hiring D'Anton Lynn to be the team's defensive coordinator, Riley set out to further revamp the defensive unit as a whole. This included bringing on North Dakota State head coach Matt Entz to coach the linebackers (and serve as the associate head coach on defense).
Well, according to a report Saturday afternoon from Matt Zenitz of 247Sports, the Trojans are poised to add one of the nation's most respected assistant coaches.
According to Zenitz, Houston defensive coordinator Doug Belk is joining the team as the new defensive backs coach. This news comes shortly after coach Donte Williams announced his departure from the program.
Belk has been Houston's defensive coordinator for the last five years. In 2021, he was a semifinalist for the Broyles Award (given to the country's best assistant coach).
With Dana Holgorsen fired, Belk immediately became a hot commodity for other programs. Shrewdly, USC went out and secured yet another coach with multiple years of coordinator experience.
Belk is known as a rising star within the profession. At only 36 years of age, he worked under both Nick Saban and Kirby Smart at Alabama as a grad assistant for three seasons. He also had a two-year stint at West Virginia as the corners coach before leaping to Houston.
A native of Georgia, Belk is known as a very gregarious individual. Not only has he churned out multiple defenders to the NFL from Houston, but he's got some serious recruiting chops. USC now has a proven recruiter with deep ties to both Texas and Georgia -- two of the most talent-rich states in the country.
This has the potential to be a home run hire for USC. It's not often you can convince a coordinator on the Power Five level to take a 'step down' and become a position coach. It's even more rare to see a head coach at another program (Entz) do the same thing.
With this revamped defensive staff, you're looking at a group chock full of experience and versatility.
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