For the first time since 2001, Bill Belichick will hire a coordinator from outside of the Patriots staff. The Boston Globe reported this morning that erstwhile Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano will join the team to serve in the same role, replacing de facto 2018 DC and now-Miami-bound Brian Flores. He’ll be Belichick’s third defensive lead in as many seasons—though given Schiano’s disastrous tenure the last time he was an NFL head coach, I doubt that he will follow in Flores’s and Matt Patricia’s footsteps.
Schiano, of course, comes to New England with an impressive amount of baggage. He spend three successful seasons with the Buckeyes before new head coach Ryan Day chose not to renew his contract six weeks ago. That he was with the Buckeyes at all in 2018 noteworthy, since Tennessee hired him in Nov. 2017, only to back out of the hire hours later after everyone yelled at them about Schiano’s track record of being a huge asshole and being accused of knowing about Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse at Penn State.
The Patriots are perhaps the only NFL team with the organizational regard to get away with hiring Schiano, since he is this decade’s most glaring example of the archetypal college hardass who goes to the pros and flames out in horrifying fashion. Tampa Bay won seven games in Schiano’s first season and four in his second, though win totals hardly tell the story. Schiano is infamous for banning Super Bowl hero Dexter Jackson from Bucs practice, possibly rigging the team captain vote, having Bucs players compare his reign to that of a dictatorship, and overseeing a massive MRSA outbreak, which spawned this classic.
Schiano will coach four of his former players: Adrian Clayborn, Jason McCourty, Devin McCourty, and Duron Harmon. Either nobody consulted them, or they are the most pure of Schiano Men.