College football’s 2019 coaching carousel predictions
5. Kansas Jayhawks
The Kansas Jayhawks have to do something to get their program back on the right track. I personally feel like a flexbone triple option offense could be the key to giving them a unique recruiting and schematic advantage (I explained this idea here). If they chose to go another route, Willie Fritz would be a great first option.
Fritz is the current Tulane head football and the former head coach at Central Missouri. He has experience coaching at PIttsburg State in Kansas as well as Central Missouri. On top of that, he was the head coach at Sam Houston State, Georgia Southern and now Tulane giving him a recruiting range of Texas, Georgia and NOLA to go with Kansas City. However, with Tulane locking up Fritz, it’s possible that Jim Leavitt, the Oregon Ducks’ defensive coordinator, gets a second chance.
Leavitt has a background in the state of Kansas having served as the co-defensive coordinator at Kansas State under legendary coach Bill Snyder. From there, Leavitt was South Florida’s first head coach from 1997-2009 before he was fired amidst controversy. After a four-year stint in the NFL with the 49ers, Leavitt returned to the college ranks as the defensive coordinator at Colorado and now Oregon.
As the defensive coordinator of both the Buffaloes and Ducks, Leavitt has resurrected horrible defenses into aggressive top-25 products.
While this isn’t a direct butterfly effect, it will be one that kick starts Mario Cristobal’s ending in Eugene as Leavitt’s defense and Justin Herbert are the backbone of the program and once Leavitt leaves and Herbert departs for the NFL — Cristobal could return Oregon back to earth like Colorado has under Mike MacIntyre since Leavitt’s departure.
That could bring an opening in Boulder in 2019, and Oregon by 2020.