South Carolina reportedly hires Arkansas TE coach Dowell Loggains as new OC
Shane Beamer has finally filled the hole at offensive coordinator, and he did it with something of a surprising name, although we did have his name for you earlier this week. According to ABC Columbia's Mike Gillespie, the new offensive coordinator replacing Marcus Satterfield after he left for Nebraska will be Dowell Loggains, an NFL veteran who is still light on college football experience.
Most recently, Loggains spent two years on Sam Pittman's coaching staff at Arkansas as the tight ends coach. The Razorbacks went 15-10 in 25 games with Loggains on staff, but he was not the one calling plays.
In fact, Loggains has never called plays at the collegiate level. He does have a plethora of experience with it at the professional level, operating the offense for four different franchises.
Loggains, a Newport, Arkansas native who played college football in Fayetteville, started his coaching career as a quality control coach with the Tennessee Titans in 2008. After four years in Nashville, he was promoted to the role of offensive coordinator ahead of the 2012 season, but his two seasons of calling plays yielded below-average results. The Titans were 13-19 overall and his two offenses finished 25th and 23rd in total offense out of 32 teams respectively.
His next stop was in Cleveland as a quarterbacks coach, where he worked closely with former Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel and South Carolina legend Connor Shaw, who took to Twitter to give Loggains a vote of confidence. After one season with the Browns, he took over the same role with the Chicago Bears for one year before being promoted to Chicago's offensive coordinator, a position he held for two more seasons under head coach John Fox.
But once again, the results were poor and the Bears went in another direction with their entire coaching staff after 2017. Chicago did finish 14th in total offense in 2016, but it did not translate to points with a fifth-worst mark in the league. In 2017 the team was 30th in total offense and 29th in scoring offense as the team went 5-11.
After his stint in Chicago, he landed in Miami under Adam Gase with another former Texas A&M quarterback in Ryan Tannehill, but one season of calling plays yielded a unit that was 31st in total offense and 26th in scoring offense. And then in his final NFL stop before stepping into the college rankings, he coordinated a New York Jets offense, again with Gase, that was dead last in the NFL in total offense in back-to-back seasons in 2019 and 2020.
With the Gase seasons, it is difficult to tell who truly had creative control over those offenses. I'll also say that besides Jay Cutler, who had a career-best year under Loggains tutelage as QB coach for the Bears, Loggains didn't work with many elite quarterbacks in a league that thrives on elite QB play. During his time in the NFL, he worked with: Johnny Manziel, Jake Locker, Brian Hoyer, Matt Barkley, Mitch Trubisky, Sam Darnold, Luke Falk, late-stage Joe Flacco, and Brock Osweiler. Not exactly a who's who of QB talent.
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