Only two weeks have passed since Mississippi State blew out Michigan 52-14 in the Gator Bowl, but Dan Mullen has already made three significant coaching changes on his staff. The most recent hire is Geoff Collins, who will be the co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for the Bulldogs. Collins was most recently the defensive coordinator at Florida International.
“Geoff has shown the type of immediate impact he can bring to a defense by what he did at Florida International last season,” Mullen said. “He’s a smart young coach that has great experience, and he’ll bring the same kind of aggressive attitude and philosophy that we expect from our defense at Mississippi State.”
At FIU in the 2010 season, Collins’ defense led the Sun Belt in total defense, scoring defense, pass efficiency defense and turnover margin.
Collins actually finds himself at MSU as the result of another former Sun Belt Conference defensive coordinator taking a new job. Manny Diaz, the Dawgs’ 2010 defensive coordinator, was the defensive coordinator at Middle Tennessee State before moving to Starkville last January, and he left MSU last week to take the same position with the Texas Longhorns. When Diaz left, Mullen promoted co-defensive coordinator Chris Wilson to Diaz’s spot, which left an opening for Collins.
However, Mullen said it is not about the conference, but about the person.
“You know what it is, there’s a certain energy level I want not just on the field of our staff,” Mullen said. “I want people that are hungry and are coming on their way up in the profession and want to prove themselves.”
Collins said he believes he will fit that mold.
“I’m happy to be a part of the Mississippi State family and excited to work with Coach Mullen and Coach Wilson and the entire staff,” Collins said. “It’s great to be joining a program that is growing and building and headed the right way like this one is, and I’m ready to hit the ground running.”
Mullen and Collins have never worked together, but Mullen said they met many years ago when both were still trying to make a name for themselves.
“Very excited about our staff,” Mullen said. “Really excited to have Geoff on board, a guy that I’ve known. The first time we met was a film exchange when I was coaching at Columbia and he was coaching at Fordham. You couldn’t just hit a button and hotwire all the video through the air somewhere. You actually had to exchange videotapes. We had to drive somewhere in lower Manhattan, northern Bronx right there, I think we met up to exchange the film. Even though we’ve never worked together, our paths have crossed a lot through the years.”
Mullen and many members of his staff have been credited as young high-energy coaches. Mullen was considered a “hot coach” coming out of Florida, and he said he sees the same thing in Collins.
“He’s gonna be an in-your-face, high-energy, very detailed guy. When you come from the background I know he comes from, you better cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’. That’s just kind of the, some of the old school background he was brought up under.”
Mullen said that Collins’s extensive work at multiple programs gives him an edge.
“Obviously, he has coordinator experience. I think the great thing in talking with him, he had coordinator experience early in his career, then got to go see a different level of football, got to be a coordinator again, then went to see not as a coordinator,” Mullen said. “Then he was a coordinator last year, and we saw the great improvement he made at FIU with that defense in just one year, one season. I think when you get a chance to get in that position, then step back from it, you get to see, maybe, things you could do better. I think the experience he’s had over the last couple years has really catapulted him into being one of the hottest coaches in the country.”
In particular, Mullen said Collins’s experience recruiting in the southeast is important for what they do at Mississippi State.
“He’s recruited in the SEC before; been the recruiting coordinator at several schools,” Mullen said. “I just hear from everybody what a big-time recruiter he is. That’s one of the first things, when I called and talked to [other coaches] about his background. They say, ‘boy he’s a sharp, up-and-coming coach, in your face guy, but he is one heck of a recruiter.’ So, he kind of brings to the table what we’re looking for. I think as you meet with a lot of the different coaches, and I talked with a lot of people, it was great.”
Collins said he has a passion for recruiting and spoke energetically about his travels on the recruiting trail. He knows MSU is after the best talent in the state of Mississippi, but Collins said he will go anywhere.
“If you have one kid in Alaska that’s good, send me. I’ll get him,” Collins said.
Perhaps more important than Mullen is Wilson, who will be working very closely with Collins. Wilson expressed his support for Collins, and he stressed that the defense will remain the same now that he is the lead man for the unit.
Wilson said he expects very little change to the defense.
“My office changed, my car changed,” Wilson said. “Those two things are good because Manny had the better car and the bigger office. That part was good. But other than that, philosophically, no. When you look back at this deal, Manny and I always talked about it, it was always 51-49. He had the 51 percent because at the end of the day, he had to make the call. Our whole goal at the end of the day was for a chimpanzee on game day to be able to call our defense. That’s what we wanted. We wanted our kids to be able to call it themselves if one of us fell on the ground.”
Wilson said that with Collins coming in, the dynamic will remain the same.
“That won’t change much with Geoff coming in,” Wilson said. “I think he’s along the same lines; high energy, he brings a new version of some things. He brings some Alabama background, some Georgia Tech background, and we’ll combine those and keep it proven on defense. The big compliment was recommendations from guys that I trusted, the biggest thing was fit. Until they put 12 out there, this game will never change, so we wanted a guy who could fit.”
Collins said he has never been a part of co-coordinated anything, but it is part of what attracted him to MSU.
“I think this is actually a pretty nice way and a pretty unique way to structure the defensive staff,” Collins said. “Chris Wilson has the same mindset that Manny had, because I’m close with Manny, and I have the same mindset as Manny.”
The final piece of the coaching puzzle was replacing wide receivers coach Mark Hudspeth, who left before the bowl game to become the head at Louisiana Lafayette. In his absence, graduate assistant Angelo Mirando coached the wide receivers for the Gator Bowl.
Apparently, he did so well that Mullen decided to promote him into Hudspeth’s former role.
“He took over the receivers position, and I think our receivers, even though being shorthanded, played their best game of the year in that bowl game when he was coaching them,” Mullen said. “That to me is better than anything anybody can impress me with drawn on a board in an interview. He did it with our players. They improved and played their best game of the year with him coaching them. He made it easy for us.”
The 25-year-old Mirando fits the mold of Mullen’s ideal coach, particularly the young part of the description. Mullen said in the days leading up to the Gator Bowl that he sees much of himself in Mirando.
The new wide receivers coach said he has a simple philosophy in his new position.
“My philosophy in dealing with players: coach them hard and love them hard,” Mirando said. “They gotta know that I care about them, and they gotta know that I’m gonna make them better. That’s all I care about. As long as they believe that, we’re gonna have a good group.”