Mel Tucker hired a new defensive line coach for Michigan State football in Diron Reynolds. What does he bring to the table?
After weeks of shuffling through candidates following the departure of Marco Coleman, Mel Tucker has found the guy who’s going to lead the Michigan State football defensive line.
Brandon Jordan was a home-run hire last year as a pass rush specialist and Coleman was another quality hire to lead the group after Ron Burton left. But Coleman decided to head back to his alma mater of Georgia Tech after just one season with the Spartans.
And that left Tucker with a big decision to make. Would he go the in-house route and promote Kevin Vickerson or Jordan or would he go outside the program to make a splash hire?
Tucker chose the latter.
On Wednesday afternoon, the hire was made official as the school announced that Diron Reynolds would be taking over for Coleman as the team’s next defensive line coach.
So what do we know about Reynolds who has 25-plus years of experience in both the NFL and Power Five ranks?
Well, according to the press release, Reynolds spent the last seven seasons at Stanford before David Shaw stepped away from the program. Before that, he was at Oklahoma when the Sooners won the Big 12 title in 2015, and prior to that, he was a defensive assistant at Stanford (2014) and also spent over a decade in the NFL with the Colts, Vikings, and Dolphins (2002-2013).
Here’s a list of the talented defensive linemen he coached at the college level, according to the press release:
- Solomon Thomas (Stanford): highest defensive lineman drafted in school history in 2017 at No. 3 overall
- Harrison Phillips (Stanford): All-American selected No. 96 overall in 2018 and led all defensive linemen in the nation with 103 tackles that year
- Casey Toohill (Stanford): Selected in the seventh round of the 2020 NFL Draft
- Thomas Booker (Stanford): Selected in the fifth round of the 2022 NFL Draft
- Charles Tapper (Oklahoma): All-Big 12 first-team lineman, selected in the fourth round of the 2016 NFL Draft
Reynolds also coached some stars at the NFL level such as Jared Allen, Nick Williams, and Jason Taylor.
Experience isn’t lacking here with Reynolds and Tucker has known him for a while so the two have a good relationship and will be able to work well together.
This feels like a great hire for Michigan State football and it comes at the perfect time with five-star defensive lineman David Stone heading back to East Lansing for another visit this weekend.
