Report: Virginia Tech Targeting an NFL Assistant to Fill Its Vacant Offensive Coordinator Position
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Virginia Tech made a surprise hire at defensive coordinator a few weeks ago and it appears as if they have done so again for its offensive coordinator position. According to Bruce Feldman at The Athletic, Virginia Tech is targeting Buffalo Bills assistant Christian Taylor to be its new offensive coordinator. Taylor was a defensive quality control assistant for the Bills this past season, but has previous coordinator experience in college. Taylor was the offensive coordinator at Willam and Mary and previously the offensive coordinator at the University of San Diego.
SOURCE: Va. Tech is targeting Bills staffer Christian Taylor for the Hokies OC vacancy. Taylor had one of football’s most creative offenses when he was the OC at William & Mary from 2020-2023. https://t.co/aLHIbozvnu
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) February 13, 2025
This is going to be an interesting hire. Taylor coached some of the best offenses at the FCS level while at William and Mary, as well as San Diego, but has not been a coordinator at the FBS level before, which could be a big challenge. He is a creative play caller and in an article that Feldman wrote back in 2023, he talked about some of the creative concepts that Taylor used to get his offenses performing at a high level:
"What’s even more impressive is that at Taylor’s previous coaching stop, the University of San Diego, his team ranked No. 2 in passing and helped develop walk-on tight end Dalton Kincaid into an NFL prospect (Kincaid later transferred to Utah). Two of his quarterbacks at USD, Anthony Lawrence and Reid Sinnett, were Walter Payton Award finalists. San Diego also became the first non-scholarship program to win an FCS playoff game. (The Toreros did it twice, beating Cal Poly and Northern Arizona.)
The 39-year-old Taylor, a former Tribe quarterback, left his alma mater in 2010 to become an offensive assistant at San Diego State, then followed Brady Hoke to Michigan to become an analyst before returning to the FCS. Al Borges and Tanner Engstrand, now the Detroit Lions passing game coordinator, were big influences on how Taylor looked at the game.
One CAA defensive coordinator said a big key that makes Taylor’s offense so lethal is that the Tribe “use a ton of eye manipulation,” adding that William & Mary motioned about 65 percent of the time in regular-down situations. William & Mary’s bread-and-butter is running the wide zone, and like a Kyle Shanahan operation, the DC says, they really want to get you running to the sideline, get you so sucked up in the run game and then run bootlegs and get the tight end wide open on a Y-cross.
“The problem is, like the 49ers, they’re so check-with-me. They find where your 2i (defensive lineman) is and check (to a stretch play) in that direction. You move the front but they’d still reset it to get into the perfect play. Their quarterback knows all the answers. And now a lot of their stuff is triple-(option)-based so they’ll have a three-back set with the wide receiver under center and then they run triple back into the boundary.
“All the triple stuff with the two-quarterback stuff is probably one-third of the time. The scheme really speeds up inside linebackers’ internal clocks, where the wide zone gets up on them. They want your shoulders not to be square and they get you gong east-west and cut it back. It’s also a cultural thing with them, where their guys get tackled and sprint back to the huddle.
“They played (FBS) Charlotte and absolutely destroyed them. It was a clinic. They avalanched us. They avalanched almost everybody.”
You can read the entire piece here and I would encourage every Hokies fan to do so.
Hokies head coach Brent Pry is heading into a very big season in Blacksburg and one where he needs to show improvement. He has two new coordinator with him now and both have upside, while also never having been coordinators at the FBS level. With Kyron Drones leading the way once again on offense, Taylor will need to maximize his strengths to be successful. Virginia Tech is replacing quite a few players at the running back, wide receiver, and along the offensive line. They have reached into the transfer portal to fill some of those needs, but the results are what is going to matter at the end of the day.
Additional Links:
Virginia Tech Football 2025 Offseason Outlook: Wide Receiver
Jackson Caudell has been covering Georgia Tech Athletics For On SI since March 2022 and the Atlanta Hawks for On SI since October 2023. Jackson is also the co-host of the Bleav in Georgia Tech podcast and he loves to bring thoughtful analysis and comprehensive coverage to everything that he does. Find him on X @jacksoncaudell
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