It’s been a tough week for Northwestern football. After firing head coach Pat Fitzgerald on Monday due to alleged reports of hazing within the program, Northwestern has announced that defensive coordinator David Braun will be the acting head coach. Northwestern has also chosen to keep all its assistants despite Fitzgerald’s firing.
In the long term, if Northwestern chose to hire an outside candidate, here’s the coach who could bring Northwestern back to being that scrappy Big Ten team.
Why Paul Chryst Would Be the Perfect Coach at NorthWestern
If any coach knows how to be successful in the Big Ten, it’s Paul Chryst. Chryst went 67-26 (.720) and 43-18 (.705) in BigTen play.
This is a coach who brought smash-mouth football back to Wisconsin. Northwestern and Wisconsin have always been similar in terms of being run-first football teams.
Currently, Chryst is an analyst at Texas and maybe wants to stay out of coaching for a year. Still, if he wants to dip his toes back into the coaching pool, Chryst and Northwestern would be a match made in heaven.
Chryst knows the area well, he wouldn’t have high expectations to win a national championship, and he would likely be able to win more than four games in two seasons.
Chryst is still relatively young at 57 years old and has a boatload of experience coaching in college football. One of the reasons Chryst lost his job at Wisconsin is that he fell behind in recruiting, wasn’t active in the transfer portal to fill in positional gaps, and struggled to adapt to the new college football world of NIL. At Northwestern, he doesn’t have to worry about any of that because that’s always been a team where eight-nine wins is considered a good year.
Paul Chryst deserves another opportunity; he’s a good coach for the Big Ten and won a lot of games in that conference. If you want a coach who players respect, a good motivator, and a guy who will keep your team competitive, hire Paul Chryst. He could help bring Northwestern back to relevancy.
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