Caught this cool moment during the celebration of Tyler Santucci on FaceTime. @CoachSantucci pic.twitter.com/gBAEuEr0DE
— Kelly Quinlan (@Kelly_Quinlan) August 25, 2024
Santucci, 36, has built his resume to be one of the best of any assistant coach in major college football. He's had many different stops since his coaching career began in in 2010. After being a linebacker at Stony Brook from 2006 to 2010, he quickly became a graduate assistant for the school following his last game. In 2014, he got his first FBS gig at Wake Forest as a graduate assistant.
From 2016 to 2019, Santucci had defensive coaching roles at Texas State, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, and a return to Wake Forest as a linebacker coach. After that, he spent three season back at Texas A&M as a linebackers coach from 2020 to 2022. In his last year at College Station, Santucci was given a split of the defensive coordinator role.
In 2023, he left to become Mike Elko's defensive coordinator at Duke. That year saw the Blue Devils have the 16th ranked scoring defense in the nation, a year after they ranked 31st. It was a great improvement to an already good defense and when Elko left to become Texas A&M head coach in 2024, Santucci bolted for the DC role with Georgia Tech.
Last year, the Yellow Jackets had the 97th ranked scoring defense. This year, Santucci helped get Georgia Tech up to 72nd in that regard. While the unit still struggled at times, the team only gave up 40 points once in their seven victories. Their most impressive performance was against No.4 Miami ironically, as the Hurricanes only scored 23 points, Miami's worst performance of the season.
Per a report from On3. com, Miami has reached out to Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Tyler Santucci about potentially replacing fired Lance Guidry. But Texas A&M reportedly also in the mix for him.
— Barry Jackson (@flasportsbuzz) December 31, 2024
Per On3.com via Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald, Mario Cristobal has already reached out to Santucci about potentially filling the job. There is no doubt that the Yellow Jackets assistant is one of the top in the ACC. His resume suggests that Tyler is not afraid of pouncing on a new opportunity and Miami is a way more enticing job to have in the ACC than their Atlanta counterparts.
Of course, there's always more money to be made when it comes to Miami. Of course, they are also a bigger brand in college athletics and Miami is a school that can exploit the advantages of the transfer portal. Now considering the bounce back the program was looking for, this can be too good of a job for Santucci to pass up. This is a name to keep an eye out for.