Lane Kiffin’s new offensive coordinator at Florida Atlantic University Charlie Weis Jr. sounds like he’s going to be the real deal.
Weis, who is the son of former Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis Sr., is only 24-years-old, but has been compared to New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
Bleacher Report revealed the following in a new profile:
Listen to Gil Brandt, legendary NFL personnel man, tell the story of when he first knew, in 2011, that Weis Jr. was different from any young coach he had ever seen:
“I’m sitting down with Charlie Weis, his dad, and Charlie Jr. at Florida when Charlie was the offensive coordinator for the Gators,” Brandt says. “I had talked at length with his son, who was in his first year of school there. He was 18. All he ever wanted to be in life is a football coach. An unbelievably meticulous, organized, bright football mind.”
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“So Charlie Jr. leaves, and Charlie asked me, ‘So what do you think of him?'” Brandt continues. “I told him, ‘I’ve met two people in my life where I knew, without a doubt, he would be a successful coach. One was Bill Belichick.’ Then Charlie asks me, ‘Who was the other?’ I said, ‘He just got up and walked away.'”
Remember after this hire was made when I was pretty much the only person in the media who said this was a great idea? Kiffin was pretty much getting ripped across the board for essentially hiring a kid to run the offense of a division one football program. The guy is a year younger than I am. Take a long and hard moment to think about how crazy it sounds. Yet, I said this wasn’t a bad idea, and I could get behind the precedent this might set. Everybody else in the media was going crazy.
Well, I sure do look validated now that Weis is over here being compared to a guy who has won multiple Super Bowls. I hope like hell this is a success, if not for any other reason that it’s going to make everybody who criticized Kiffin look like an idiot. I also really Weis calls plays like it’s a video game because that’s exactly what I would do.
This is going to be so much fun over the course of the next year.