4 things to know about Dowell Loggains
South Carolina has its man.
USC has hired Arkansas tight ends coach Dowell Loggains as its new offensive coordinator following Marcus Satterfield’s departure to Nebraska.
Here are four things to know about Loggains:
Loggains is a long-time NFL assistant
That Beamer hired Loggains is interesting on plenty of levels, the first being that the latter has spent almost his entire career in the NFL.
Loggains walked on to the Arkansas football team and spent four years in Fayetteville as a player before jumping into assistant coaching roles with the Dallas Cowboys, Tennessee Titans, Chicago Bears, Cleveland Browns, Miami Dolphins and New York Jets.
The Texas native spent seven of his 16 years in the NFL as an offensive coordinator, to mixed results (more on that in a minute). His only college coaching experience has come the past two seasons at Arkansas.
His track record as an offensive coordinator isn’t great
Loggains was a sort of wunderkind when he first landed in the NFL, receiving a bump to become the Titans’ offensive coordinator before he was 35 years old.
That said, his almost decade calling plays hasn’t exactly bred dynamic offenses.
Loggins’ offenses finished toward the bottom of the NFL, averaging only 305.2 yards per game in his seven years as an offensive coordinator. He also guided his teams to a top 20 finish in yards per game just once, while the Jets ranked dead last in the NFL in yards per game his last two seasons in the league.
In 2017, ESPN produced a story that ranked the NFL’s best play-callers. Loggains, then with the Bears, was rated the worst in the NFL.
He’s been a solid recruiter at Arkansas
Loggains hasn’t been at Arkansas long, but his short history on the recruiting trail does inspire some confidence he’ll be a nice addition in bringing players to Columbia.
He’s been the primary recruiter for six players who have signed with or are committed to the Razorbacks. Four of those players are rated four-star recruits, per 247Sports, and three are rated among the top 200 prospects in the 2023 class.
Folks will argue it was time for Satterfield to go despite what the Gamecocks did over the final two weeks of the season. However, Satterfield was a solid recruiter and had worked well in getting South Carolina in on some serious quarterback recruits during his time in Columbia.
The expectation is that Loggains will be able to give USC another elite recruiter.
Loggains had head coaching buzz
Nothing really materialized, but there’s a world where Loggains wasn’t even in the running for South Carolina’s offensive coordinator gig. Why? He’d be running his own program.
Rumors swirled that Loggains was a popular choice in Tempe to replace Herm Edwards at Arizona State when Edwards was fired amid a mess of NCAA violations, among other things.
The school’s brass eventually sided with Oregon offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham, who went to school there and was a high school coach in the area during his time as an undergrad. Dillingham also previously spent two years as a graduate assistant at ASU.
That Loggains was even in the running for that job short of just about any discernible college experience the past two years, though, offers a look at how he’s held within coaching circles.
This story was originally published December 13, 2022 at 4:05 PM with the headline "4 things to know about Dowell Loggains."
