Ernest Jones, Buffalo's defensive backs coach and recruiting coordinator, has taken a job with his former boss in South Bend.
Now Buffalo head coach Jeff Quinn has to replace the fifth assistant coach he has lost, or fired, over the past two years. UB had just announced the hiring of Lou Tepper. Tepper is now charged with filling out his defensive coaching staff.
The thing that Jones was good at doing was getting the class together early but those classes, like the ones pulled by Gill, typically had only a hand full of notable pulls and, on the whole, was in the bottom third of the conference.
The Buffalo news is making a lot out of this change but to be honest there is no way to yet measure his impact at Buffalo. That won't happen until this next season, and perhaps the one after that, are completed
When Jones and Quinn arrived in early 2010 most of that years class had already been mostly completed. To their credit they mostly held it together and added a few new recruits like Kristjan Sokoli and Colby Way but on the whole we have been watching a team consisting of mostly Gill era recruits over the past two seasons.
That starts to change this year, so if we see a break out season from some of our sophomores then yes, this was a big loss. But getting an average class early is not really better than getting an average class late, even if it makes covering UB over the summer a bit easier.
Where does UB go from here?
Well coach Quinn's last four replacements have all been older coaches with long resumes and who Quinn himself has had little exposure to . Now with Lou Tepper taking over the defense it's likely that trend will continue as Tepp will probably have a hand in selecting his new defensive back coach.