On New UW Football Staff, Sheridan Is Only One Who Needs to Rebound

The majority of the coaches who followed Kalen DeBoer to the University of Washington football program arrived in Seattle feeling good about themselves, if not a certain amount of professional momentum.

Six of the 10 new Husky assistants last season helped put together a 10-3 bowl team with DeBoer at Fresno State. Their new jobs were promotions rather than rebounds, which so often happens in their line of work — see Jimmy Lake's former UW staff.

Of the other new Husky assistant coaches, JaMarcus Shephard voluntarily left Purdue and Inoke Breckterfield on his own exited Vanderbilt to join the new Husky staff while holdover Scott Huff retained his UW offensive-line job.

However, Nick Sheridan's situation was different than the rest.

Similar to what happened with most of Lake's previous staff, he was fired as the Indiana offensive coordinator after two seasons in that post, and five years on the Hoosiers coach staff. The Big Ten team incurred nonstop injuries and nosedived to 2-10, and changes had to be made.

Sheridan, just 33, a former Michigan quarterback and hailing from a coaching family, was deemed expendable in the rebuild.

He's the only one among DeBoer's staff who took a demotion in coming to the UW as its tight-ends coach.

This week, Sheridan sat down with Tom Brew of Hoosiers Now, which, similar to this Husky-related website is part of the Sports Illustrated FanNation network, and he discussed his firing for the first time.

Brew considered this such an important story he traveled all the way from the Midwest to meet up with the former Hoosiers offensive leader at Husky Stadium before spring football begins next week.

Sheridan was circumspect about his Indiana dismissal, which he almost treated as inevitable when looking at the overall Indiana team success.

"Facts are facts, and I was a 2-10 offensive coordinator last year,'' Sheridan told Brew. "I was a 6-1 coordinator the year before, but I was a 2-10 coordinator last year and, like they say, you are what your record says you are. Sure, we had a lot of injuries, but again, I'm not making excuses. Regardless of the experience level of the guys that had to play, it was my job to get them ready. And that was hard.

"We didn't do a very good job of that. None of us did. When you go 2-10, no one can say they did a good job, and that includes me.''

In Seattle, Sheridan will get plenty of chances to relaunch his career and work his way back to a coordinator role or maybe even to a head-coaching job someday. He and DeBoer worked together at Indiana in 2019. He was once named one of the nation's top assistants under 30.

He's the son of Bill Sheridan, a well-respected NFL and college coach for the past four decades, who is the newly hired Wisconsin inside linebackers coach.

As for this younger Sheridan, he's meeting the UW football players as fast as he can and getting a good look at an area of the country that one of his close friends has called home.

Stephen Schilling, once a highly touted offensive lineman from Bellevue High School, ultimately chose Michigan over the Huskies and had a successful Big Ten career that briefly landed him in the NFL. Schilling was a member of Sheridan's wedding party. A Seattle-area connection was never far off.

You can read Tom Brew's full story about Nick Sheridan on the Hoosiers Now website by clicking on this link.

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