Who will be Penn State football’s next offensive coordinator? 5 potential candidates

Penn State head coach James Franklin shook up his staff this weekend when he fired offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich. While tight ends coach Ty Howle and running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider will be co-offensive coordinators for the rest of the season, Franklin will have to hire a replacement for 2024 — a year the team should finally make the College Football Playoff.

Here are five candidates who could fit the billing to be the next Penn State offensive coordinator.

Buffalo Bills quarterbacks coach Joe Brady

Brady will be a name that gets connected to this job until it’s filled. He was a graduate assistant under Franklin from 2015-2016 but really came onto the scene in 2019 when he was the passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach at LSU. That team won the national title and had two of the best receivers in football in Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase. Brady spent the next two years under Matt Rhule as the offensive coordinator for the Carolina Panthers before joining the Buffalo Bills in 2022 as their quarterbacks coach, where he’s still on staff. There is reason to believe he could help reinvigorate an offense that desperately needs it considering his time on that LSU team and the impact he had in one year.

Colorado co-offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Sean Lewis

It’s a safe bet that Lewis is going to be connected to every offensive coordinator opening because of his current situation. He’s the co-offensive coordinator at Colorado after beginning the season as the offensive coordinator for Deion Sanders’ staff in Boulder. Despite having plenty of success, he received the demotion and appears like a prime target for other staffs. Lewis spent five seasons as the head coach at Kent State from 2018-2022 and has experience leading a program. That should come in handy for a team that needs the new coordinator to operate like the head coach of that side of the ball — much like Manny Diaz does as the defensive coordinator.

Utah offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Andy Ludwig

Ludwig is an interesting choice because it would be banking on how he would handle an elevation in talent level on offense. It’s easy to assume a coordinator will maximize high-end talent because they do the same with good but not great players — but that’s not always the case. Ludwig is in his ninth overall season at Utah and his fifth straight after also spending 2005-2008 with the program. The last two years he’s produced top-20 offenses in ESPN’s Bill Connelly’s SP+, a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. He’s done that despite being at a program that hasn’t pulled in the highest level of talent — although it does consistently bring in top-40 classes in the country. Ludwig was a candidate for the offensive coordinator job at Notre Dame last year, but also said this spring that he’s going to finish his football career at Utah, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Things can change quickly in college football, however, and Utah will be a Big 12 team beginning next season — a far cry from when the Pac-12 was stable when Ludwig made those comments.

Akron head coach Joe Moorhead

Brady will come up a lot, but Moorhead will come up even more. He was by far the most successful offensive coordinator of Franklin’s tenure and was at the helm of the unit in 2016 and 2017. That includes the only win over Ohio State and Franklin’s only Big Ten title, both of which came in 2016. Moorhead went on to be the head coach at Mississippi State for two years, going 14-12, then headed west to be the OC at Oregon in 2020 and 2021 before coming back east to lead Akron. He’s a sitting head coach, but the allure of returning to State College could be appealing with Moorhead and the Zips sitting at 2-8 on the season and struggling to compete in the Mid-American Conference. It’s not out of the question that he returns and brings instant improvement to the offense.

Penn State running backs coach/interim co-offensive coordinator Ja’Juan Seider

It would be a surprise if Franklin kept the hire internal because of how important it is. The head coach is locked into a long-term deal, but this will still be his sixth full-time offensive coordinator since he took over in 2014 and he needs to get the unit back on track. The College Football Playoff should be attainable next year when it expands to 12, so hiring a coordinator without play-calling experience could be a tough sell. Still, Seider is a rising star in the coaching ranks and should be a head coach in short order. There’s even a chance he bypasses being a coordinator and gets a head seat first. Hiring him would also be a sign that the offense could look similar to the one Yurcich ran, given that it’s the continuity hire on some level. Seider is a quality candidate, but it might be a case of his timeline not matching up with the program’s timeline.