Staff Update: Baylor Hires Troy OC/OL Coach as New Offensive Line Coach

Last night I told you I didn’t think we’d have to wait long for Baylor to fill the last remaining spot on the offensive coaching staff, at least as far as on-field positions go, and that turned out to be true. Multiple outlets are now reporting that Baylor has hired Ryan Pugh, currently the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach at Troy, as our new offensive line coach. Pugh is just 32 years old and has spent the last two years at Troy. Before that he spent a year coaching the OL at BYU (2018), which ties him to Grimes, since that was his first year in Provo. Pugh’s first on-field coaching position came right before that at UTSA from 2015-2017, where also coached GAs. Prior to UTSA, he was a GA at Auburn (where he played from 2007-2010), Virginia Tech, Cincinnati, and LSU in successive years.

I don’t know much about Pugh beyond what I just put in the paragraph above and will be excited to learn more about him going forward. I do know that I found several tweets from BYU observers hoping that they might go hire Pugh to be their new OC when Grimes came here, something they ultimately did not do as they promoted from within. That’s encouraging. SicEm365 also has an article up about the hire if you’re a subscriber over there, and it has some encouraging information about Pugh’s background in it. You should check it out.

With Pugh rounding things out, Baylor’s offensive staff now looks like this (with prior school and position in parenthesis).

OC/TE—Jeff Grimes (BYU OC)
QB—Shawn Bell (Baylor TEs)
RB—Justin Johnson (Baylor RBs)
WR—Chansi Stuckey (Clemson Player Development)
OL—Ryan Pugh (Troy OL/OC)

Overall that’s a staff that, with the exception of Grimes himself (52), is relatively young and should have several outstanding recruiters. I believe Bell is just 36, Johnson is probably 31 or 32, Stuckey is 37, and Pugh is 32. That’s a lot of youth and energy on the offensive side.

There may be additional hires of grad assistants and quality-control guys in the coming days or weeks, which we will obviously track. For now, though, Baylor has a complete coaching staff (as far as I know) once again that should hit the ground running in developing their plan for our offense and recruiting to try to shore things up before the Spring NSD in February. I guarantee they will also be very active in the transfer and JUCO markets, particularly at OL and WR.

Welcome to Baylor, Coach Pugh! You can follow him @CoachRyanPugh.

UPDATE: See Pugh in action below: