BOWLING GREEN — In a coaching staff shakeup, Bowling Green football head coach Scot Loeffler will give up offensive play-calling duties for the coming season.
Bowling Green announced that offensive coordinator Terry Malone will completely run the offense in 2021, including calling plays. Malone, who previously coached the Falcons' offensive linemen in addition to serving as offensive coordinator, will move to coaching running backs.
Next season will be Malone's 38th in coaching, a run that included a 1997 national championship on Lloyd Carr's staff at Michigan and a Super Bowl as the New Orleans Saints' tight ends coach in 2009.
This is Malone's second stint as a BG assistant coach. He spent 1985-96 at the school before going to Michigan, and was one of Loeffler's first hires upon securing the Bowling Green job in December, 2018.
The 2020 season was a brutal one for Bowling Green, and the Falcons' offense was no exception. BG lost all five games it played, finishing last in the Mid-American Conference in points per game, completion percentage, passing efficiency, red zone offense, and time of possession.
After the season, Bowling Green signed 21 high school players, its second full recruiting class under Loeffler. Due to relaxations on eligibility in 2020 — no player was forced to burn a year of eligibility due to coronavirus — BG is on track to have at least 50 scholarship freshmen next season.
With Malone moving to the running backs room, Chris Hedden will be the new offensive line coach for the Falcons. A longtime assistant of Tom Amstutz at Toledo and the former head coach at St. Francis de Sales, Hedden previously coached tight ends and running backs in his two seasons on Loeffler's staff at Bowling Green.
Greg Nosal, a former Virginia Tech offensive lineman, will move from coaching running backs to tight ends. Nosal, who served as a Hokies graduate assistant while Loeffler was the offensive coordinator in Blacksburg, Va., spent his first year on the BG staff in 2020.
The Falcons are scheduled to play their first game of next season Sept. 4 at Tennessee.
First Published January 10, 2021, 7:45 p.m.
