Chants hire former JMU head coach Matthews as defensive coordinator

Coastal Carolina football coach Joe Moglia prides himself on always having a ready-to-go list of candidates should he need to fill a position on his staff, so when he decided to make a change at defensive coordinator last month he already had a good idea of his next move.

And now it’s official.

Moglia confirmed in a phone interview Sunday that he has hired former James Madison head coach Mickey Matthews to take over the Chanticleers’ defense with a formal announcement and news conference expected this week, perhaps as early as Monday.

Matthews brings a loaded resume to Coastal Carolina after going 109-71 in 15 seasons at James Madison, highlighting his tenure there by leading the Dukes to the 2004 FCS national championship. He was let go after the 2013 season and had done some television work for ESPN while biding his time for a return to coaching.

“We talked about what our program is like and how we might be a little different than others. I think Mickey was not only open to that, but liked the idea that we do things a little differently,” Moglia said. “And the fact that we’re going into the Sun Belt [Conference], he has the experience to help us with that transition. He has a great relationship with high schools and I think he’ll be a great recruiter for us. …

“He was the guy I had the most interest in from the start.”

Moglia said there were “four or five” candidates he spoke with over the phone after deciding to part ways last month with Clayton Carlin, who served as the Chants’ defensive coordinator during Moglia’s first four seasons.

He said he and Matthews have been familiar with each other for a number of years, and Matthews had spent time visiting with the Chants during spring practice last year and also during this past season.

“At the end of my first year at Nebraska it was pretty evident to me that the most important part of the head coach’s job is to make sure he really has the right guys on his staff,” Moglia said. “They’re the guys who will recruit the right players, they’re the guys who will take care of the players. … So from the very, very beginning I put a lot of time putting together a portfolio of coaches and have done a relatively good job of keeping it up to date, adding and deleting different people over the span of the last couple years. So when I do have a change on staff, it’s usually very, very easy for me or I’m able to move relatively quickly as to who are the new candidates for a particular position.

“In Mickey’s case, I met him seven years ago and was well aware of his reputation as a both a defensive coordinator and as a head coach, and during the 2014 season I think he did one of our games for ESPN as a color [analyst]. So we had a chance to spend a little time together and he talked about missing coaching. When our position became available, I asked if that would be something he’d be interested in and he said, ‘Yes.’ ”

Matthews said Moglia had visited with his staff at James Madison when he was pursuing his own return to coaching, and since then they have stayed in contact.

“Joe came to Harrisonburg, [Va.], about seven or eight years ago and spent the day with us, and that’s how our relationship started, when he was thinking about getting back into coaching,” Matthews said Sunday. “And after that we continued to keep up through the years, and he contacted me and wanted to know if I’d be interested and certainly I was.

“I was somewhat familiar with Coastal and as we communicated there were other opportunities out there, but I felt like this was the best one. I enjoyed the interview with him and what both of us envisioned defensively with where we needed to go. It was very positive and we just hit it off.”

Matthews won the prestigious Eddie Robinson Award as the FCS coach of the year in both 1999 and 2008, an honor Moglia received this season.

During his time at James Madison, the Dukes also had two players win the Buck Buchanan Award as the top FCS defensive player. Matthews produced 13 winning seasons in his 15 years there and led the program to six FCS playoff appearances before being let go after the 2013 season after missing the playoffs for the fourth time in five seasons.

Matthews had initially accepted the defensive coordinator position at Baylor in January of 1999 before resigning three months later to take the head coaching job at James Madison. Before his 15-year run with the Dukes, he had served three years as the linebackers/secondary coach at Georgia and six years as the defensive coordinator and assistant head coach at Marshall, contributing to the Thundering Herd’s 1992 FCS national championship and three national runner-up teams while his 1993 squad ranked first nationally in scoring defense.

Matthews also spent two years as the defensive coordinator at Texas State in 1988-89 and worked as an assistant coach on the staffs at TCU, Houston, Texas-El Paso, West Texas A&M and Kansas State.

He said he hasn’t really given thought to whether he wants to be a head coach again in the future, noting that his contract with Coastal Carolina is for two years and his sole focus right now is on improving the Chants’ defense. He’s also spent the last week getting up to speed on the program’s recruiting targets to help in the final stretch before National Signing Day in February.

“I’m as excited right now as I’ve been in many years and I told Joe that in the interview,” Matthews said. “I think you’re a lot better assistant coach after you’ve been a head coach because I fully understand what’s going on in the head office up there. And the most fun I ever had as an assistant coach, whether it was at Georgia or Marshall or wherever, was [when] I was coordinating a defense because you’re in the grass roots. I love to coach football, I like to smell the grass, and I’ve always considered myself a teacher, teaching kids how to play the game in a particular way, how to play defense.

“You’ve got to play like you hair’s on fire, and we’re going to do that. [Wherever I’ve been] we’ve been good on defense. I’ve never been anywhere we didn’t play good on defense, and we’re going to play good at Coastal. We’re going to tackle well, we’re going to line up correctly, we’re going to play good defense.”

Coastal Carolina had its moments defensively this past fall while posting two shutouts in a season for the first time in program history and finishing 19th in the FCS in scoring defense at 20.1 points per game allowed, but the Chants ranked 85th in total defense while giving up an average of 416.3 yards per game. They allowed 524 rushing yards in a 41-38 loss to The Citadel in the first round of the FCS playoffs and were prone to giving up untimely big plays throughout the season.

In 2014, the Chants finished 13th in the FCS in scoring defense while allowing 19.6 points per game – the second-best mark in program history – but the defense didn’t take the next step this past season as Moglia had hoped.

Matthews, meanwhile, worked as a color analyst for Coastal Carolina’s 2014 playoff game against Richmond, attended the Chants’ game at Liberty this fall and also spent time visiting with the program in the spring and during the season. During that time he offered his critiques to both the defensive and offensive coaches after watching a few games on film and approaching the evaluation as if he were game planning against the team.

“My wife and I would come down here for vacation and I watched practice one day,” he said. “I was doing a lot of that, visiting with different staffs. [Moglia] asked me to come down in the fall and I came down. I actually spoke to the offensive staff [as well]. I guess the term in the real world is kind of consulting, being constructively critical on both sides of the ball and just trying to help them with what I was watching on film.”

Moglia said he did not expect any other changes to be made to the defensive staff. Matthews seconded that, noting that it was not something he and Moglia had discussed in their talks.

As for the style he brings, Matthews said there will be some similarities and he will try to keep the same terminology to make for a smooth transition while emphasizing the need to be stout against the run.

“I’m a 4-3 guy so in terms of just lining up, I don’t know that there’s going to be major changes there,” Matthews said. “Joe has asked me if I would keep a lot of the same terminology, and as much as we can we’re going to keep the same stuff. It’s just easier for me to learn in terms of how they call different things. I don’t care if you call them apples or oranges, that’s fine with me. …

“Really the one thing that’s never changed about football is you’ve got to stop the run. If you don’t stop the run there are [going to be] long Saturday afternoons, and that will be the No. 1 thing we’re really going to hone in on when we start in February. We’re going to study the tape of the games last year and just kind of see what our problems are, but you’ve got to stop the run.”

This story was originally published January 3, 2016 at 4:13 PM with the headline "Chants hire former JMU head coach Matthews as defensive coordinator."