I had never heard of Mike MacIntyre before this past weekend, but he’s got to be a better defensive coordinator that Wesley McGriff.
MacIntyre was Ole Miss Head Football Coach Matt Luke’s choice to replace McGriff as his defensive coordinator. McGriff’s defenses made the wrong kind of noise at Ole Miss, spending much of the time at the bottom of the Southeastern Conference’s defensive statistics.
Under McGriff, the Rebel defense finished last in scoring defense and total defense in 2018, allowing 483.4 yards and 36.2 points per game for the 1918 season. In his first season in 2017, his Rebels ranked 13th in the SEC in scoring defense and last in total defense. In fact, no Ole Miss defense allowed as many points per game as the Rebels did in 2018 since 1915!
MacIntyre first served as Ole Miss’ wide receivers coach and then as defensive backs coach from 1999 through 2002, and then joined former Ole Miss Coach David Cutcliff at Duke in 2008-2009, so he has Ole Miss history.
MacInyre was the 2016 Pac-12 Coach of the Year and the Walter Camp Coach of the Year in 2016 as the Head Coach at Colorado when the Buffaloes finished 10-4 overall, 8-1 in the Pac 12 South. But that was his best season as a head coach. Overall, he has a 30-44 record as a head coach, including a 14-39 mark in the Pac-12.
He was fired in November after six seasons as the head coach at Colorado.
Being the head coach, Matt Luke might disagree with me but, in my opinion, the Ole Miss defense did not improve one iota under McGriff in two years. We’ll have to wait and see what MacIntyre can bring to the table. If they can look respectable getting off the team bus, it will be an improvement over McGriff. So we shouldn’t have to wait long for some improvement.
He has been given a three-year contract that will pay him $1.5 million annually. That’s OK, seeing that McGriff was making $1.2 million for the past two seasons.
Bruiser Kinard, Bob Tyler, Roland Dale, Ray Poole and those other assistant coaches on Johnny Vaught’s staff back in the 1960’s, would be envious of those salaries.
MacIntyre has seven months to whip the Rebel defensive team into an SEC caliber unit. There is talent on the defensive unit but McGriff never brought it to the surface. Hopefully, MacIntyre will. Quickly.
If it was easy, anyone could do it.
