College Football 2018: Grading every new Power 5 coaching hire
7. Colorado Buffaloes
New Coach: Mel Tucker
Departed Coach: Mike MacIntyre
Mike MacIntyre’s 2016 breakthrough at Colorado proved to be a red herring as the Buffaloes finished with a losing record in all five of his other seasons at the helm.
2018 looked early on to be moving Colorado back to those heights as they started off 5-0, but six consecutive losses from that point (and a seventh after his dismissal) led to the decision to move on from him. He compiled a 30-44 record over his six seasons in Boulder, and the good graces from the 10-win season in 2016 could not sustain him through two more losing seasons.
The job drew considerable interest, and the Buffaloes surprisingly decided to eschew candidates who had direct program ties such as Eric Bieniemy and Jim Leavitt to instead go outside-the-box and hire Georgia’s defensive coordinator Mel Tucker.
In his three seasons as Kirby Smart’s defensive coordinator in Athens, Tucker fielded some ferocious defenses that helped the Bulldogs win the SEC in 2017, and come agonizingly close to a repeat in 2018.
Obviously, Kirby Smart’s defensive acumen helped, and it will be interesting to see how Tucker fares now that he has emerged from beneath the Smart wing of the Nick Saban coaching tree.
Tucker is a well-respected coach who was destined for a promotion to head coach. My only concern with him in Boulder is his lack of ties to the area. Over his coaching career in the NFL and at the collegiate level, Tucker has spent all of his time in the mid-west or south, never straying west of the Mississippi River.
Tucker is a proven recruiter, but how will he fare in an unfamiliar pipeline? He doesn’t have set recruiting ties that he can lean on while he gets adjusted to sitting in the big seat for the first time outside of a brief interim stint with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
How quickly he is able to establish those ties will go a long way in deciding how successful he’ll be at Colorado.