Georgia Tech’s coaching staff turnover now includes a Yellow Jackets legend. Defensive ends and outside linebackers coach Marco Coleman, an original member of coach Geoff Collins’ staff and a star on Tech’s 1990 national championship team, has accepted a job on the Michigan State staff, a person with knowledge of the situation confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday night. The hire was first reported by 247Sports, which indicated that he will coach the defensive line.
Coleman is the sixth member of Collins’ staff who has either left either to take a job or by dismissal since the end of the 2021 season. He is the third, following running backs coach Tashard Choice and tight ends coach Chris Wiesehan, to leave for a job on the staff of another team, Choice to Texas (after first accepting a job at USC) and Wiesehan to Temple. Ironically, Coleman heads to East Lansing, Mich., after Collins hired a former Jackets star from the staff of Spartans coach Mel Tucker, new secondary coach Travares Tillman.
Coleman brought wisdom accrued from 14 years of NFL playing experience, as well as from his All-American career at Tech, to the position. Coleman did not bring a wealth of coaching experience prior to joining Collins’ staff, having been a coaching fellow with the Philadelphia Eagles and a high-school defensive coordinator in 2017 and then serving as an assistant defensive line coach with the Oakland Raiders in 2018. But he appeared to take to the job well.
Tutoring the edge defenders, Coleman developed defensive ends such as Jordan Domineck and Jared Ivey. In addition to being an active recruiter for Tech (he recruited Florida and played a role in bringing quarterback Jeff Sims to Tech), Coleman seemed to relish the mentoring aspect of the role.
“I could go on all day about coach Coleman,” defensive end Kyle Kennard said during the 2021 season. “He’s a great male figure in my life as well as a coach.”
He was also someone who was vocal about his belief in Collins and the future of the team, one that will now not include him.
“We’ll be getting a national championship pretty soon,” Coleman said in September 2020 on Collins’ radio show. “Because of the way coach Collins has us working, iron sharpens iron.”
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