And now, Coastal Carolina’s FBS era begins in earnest

Jamey Chadwell officially takes the reins from Joe Moglia, and the Chanticleers begin looking for ways to stand out in the Sun Belt.

Bill C’s annual preview series of every FBS team in college football continues. Catch up here!

The Joe Moglia Story was just missing another win or two.

By now, you probably know the structure of the story pretty well: Ivy League assistant quits coaching in the early-1980s, leaves to work for Merrill Lynch, then makes infinity dollars as CEO of TD Ameritrade.

Finding he’s got the itch to coach again, and not needing the money, he volunteers on Bo Pelini’s Nebraska staff for a year, briefly coaches in the UFL, and then finds that Coastal Carolina is somehow willing to make him its head coach. He quickly builds a top-10 FCS program, then Coastal makes the jump to FBS. Only, he misses the Chanticleers’ debut season to fight cancer. He returns in 2018 for what turns out to be his final season on the sidelines.

It was one of the stranger, more redeeming stories you’ll ever see for a Wall Street millionaire/billionaire, and it deserved a bowl at the end of it. With Coastal heading into November at 5-3, that appeared likely. But the Chants lost their final four games, losing to maybe the Sun Belt’s three best teams at home and then slipping up, 31-28, at South Alabama in Mobile. Moglia retired and handed the reins back to Jamey Chadwell, his offensive coordinator and 2017 interim head coach.

Well, he sort of retired. Moglia is still listed on CCU’s Coaching Staff page. His title: “Chairman of Athletics / Executive Director for Football / Executive Advisor to the President.”

Once a CEO, always a CEO.

Anyway, Chadwell is technically in charge now. And he’s got a pretty unique story himself; at least, he does as much as anyone can next to Moglia.

Still only in his early 40s, Chadwell’s already on his fourth head coaching gig. He led North Greenville for three seasons, taking the Crusaders to the Division II quarterfinals in 2011, and after a year at Delta State, he jumped to Charleston Southern in 2013. His Buccaneers twice made the FCS playoffs, including a quarterfinal run in 2015, before he joined Moglia and Coastal right before their FBS jump in 2017.

Chadwell knows the head coaching role, and he knows the Myrtle Beach area. (CCU is basically about 15 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean.) The timing has been odd since he took the job — immediately go from OC to Interim Head Coach, back to OC, then back to Non-Interim HC, all within two years — but he could be well-suited for the role all the same.

He’s got some work to do. Coastal was pretty good offensively last year but has to replace its leading quarterback, its most frequent ball-carrier, its leading receiver, and the right side of its line. The defense is experienced, but, well, the defense was terrible last year.

The offense will still have to carry a good amount of weight, but it might do so. Two sophomore quarterbacks — Fred Payton and Bryce Carpenter — each outperformed outgoing senior Kilton Anderson when given the opportunity, junior running back CJ Marable averaged 6.2 yards per carry as basically a co-starter with Marcus Outlow, and the receiving corps is loaded with underclassmen with potential.

(Unfortunately, said receiving corps is without rugby wunderkind Tyrese Johnson-Fisher — rugby highlights here— who attempted to transition to football and redshirted last year, then apparently put his name in the Transfer Portal in February, as did a few starters and potential starters.)

Without Moglia (or Johnson-Fisher, for that matter), Coastal’s story is a little bit less unique now; the Chants are now a lot more like every other recent FCS program attempting to carve out an FBS niche. But that doesn’t mean they can’t fare well at some point.

Offense

The defense’s collapse prevented a bowl bid, which prevented us from more clearly noticing just how much the offense improved last year. The Chants jumped from 104th to 77th in Off. S&P+, combining solid run explosiveness (48th in Rushing S&P+) with pass efficiency (26th in passing marginal efficiency despite a horrid sack rate).

They possessed a unique mix of efficiency and inefficiency, and three different QBs played between seven and nine games, but it worked for a while. Coastal averaged 31.5 points per game during its 5-3 start and hung 47 on an excellent UAB offense early in the season.

Anderson dealt with an ankle injury for much of the season and eventually missed time, and then Carpenter injured his knee as well. Payton threw the ball well against the best of the Sun Belt late in the year, but the run game dried up a bit, and the struggling defense made sure that any drive failures put the game out of reach.

Brian Westerholt-USA TODAY Sports

Despite transfers, the competition level should be pretty high in each unit.

• Carpenter and Payton will fight it out at QB this spring. Carpenter was the more willing and efficient runner of the duo (not an unimportant thing considering the run-first nature of last year’s attack), but he also took a staggering 14 sacks in 69 pass attempts, which meant that he averaged two fewer yards per attempt than Payton (who also took a few too many) despite a higher completion rate. The winner of the battle might be determined as much by preferred playing style as on-field quality.
• At RB, Outlow graduated and third-stringer Alex James transferred, but Marable and Jacqez Hairston, both juniors, were the two most productive backs per-carry — Marable averaged 6.2 yards per carry with a 53 percent success rate, Hairston 10.7 and 67 percent, albeit over just 12 rushes. Incoming freshman Reese White was one of the stars of the 2019 recruiting haul, too.
• Coastal loses No. 1 WR Malcolm Williams (47 catches, 724 yards) but returns everyone else and adds speedy Virginia Tech transfer Samuel Denmark. Senior Ky’Jon Tyler combines a slot receiver’s efficiency (74 percent catch rate) with an X-receiver’s downfield ability (15.3 yards per catch), sophomores Jaivon Heiligh and Jeremiah Miller combined for 35 catches, and sophomore tight end was a red zone threat, with five of his 12 catches resulting in scores. Add three three-star redshirt freshmen (two TEs and a WR), a three-star true freshman, and Denmark, and you’ve got nice potential depth. Marable (15 catches for 180 yards) is a threat out of the backfield, too.
• The line took a hit when right guard Brock Hoffman transferred, but the Chants still have center Trey Carter and left tackle Steven Bedosky, and they played a pretty broad rotation last year. Sophomores Seth Harrell and Antwine Loper could be ready for extensive playing time.

Brian Westerholt-USA TODAY Sports

With Chadwell taking on a higher role, he promoted quarterbacks coach Willy Korn (yes, the former Clemson blue-chipper) and running backs coach Newland Isaac, an assistant at all three of Chadwell’s head coaching stops, to co-coordinator roles.

We’ll see if the identity changes at all. Coastal ran the ball 71 percent of the time on standard downs last year (13th-highest in FBS) and 38 percent on passing downs (43rd), which isn’t surprising, as Chadwell’s always been a run-heavy guy. But the Chants didn’t really spread opponents out (75th in solo tackles forced) and operated at one of the slowest tempos in the country. When you’ve got a defense struggling as mightily as Coastal’s did, playing at a slow pace is probably a good idea — it limits your exposure — but if the D improves, maybe the tempo goes up in turn?

Defense

Marvin Sanders’ first year in Conway could have gone better. The former North Carolina defensive coordinator, who got to know Moglia back at Nebraska, came to town with probably the best résumé on the staff, but he struggled to come up with answers for a defense hit pretty hard by attrition.

The front seven was extremely young, and the experienced unit, the secondary, got wrecked by injury. Eight defensive backs made more than 10 tackles, but only one played in all 12 games. Three freshmen — corner Derick Bush and safeties Brayden Matts and Alex Spillum — got extensive playing time, and that’s usually not good.

The pass defense was still better than the run defense, but neither were good. The Chants rushed the passer pretty well when they had the rare opportunity to (58th in sack rate), and they got better in the red zone, allowing 4.7 points per scoring opportunity, 85th in FBS. But in ranking 103rd in Passing S&P+ and 128th in Rushing S&P+, their red zone defense certainly got plenty of practice.

Photo by Lance King/Getty Images

End Jeffrey Gunter and his 14 tackles for loss are gone, but most of Coastal’s other havoc-friendly players are back in the front seven. That includes junior Tarron Jackson (11 TFLs and a team-leading 18 run stuffs), junior linebackers Teddy Gallagher and Silas Kelly, and tackle Sterling Johnson.

The size up front is solid, though Jackson is very much the only known entity at end.

Photo by Lance King/Getty Images

The good news for the secondary is that while five of the 10 leading tacklers are gone, most of the right ones return. Matts and Spillum were probably as good as any of the safeties, and senior corner Mallory Claybourne, the steadiest of the corners, is back. Depth is an obvious concern, but perhaps a couple of youngsters can help solve that problem. A lot of CCU’s more recent star recruits — redshirt freshman safety Cincir Evans, incoming freshmen Coleman Reich and KJ Johnson II — are DBs.

Beyond that, the only other good news here is that the bar is low.

One assumes that with his experience under both Bo Pelini and John Bunting, Sanders wants to get aggressive if he can, but he had limited opportunities to do so. Coastal should be able to rush the passer again in 2019, but that will only matter if a) the Chants can keep the right secondary on the field and b) they can figure out how to be a little less terrible in run defense.

Special Teams

The legs were assets for Coastal in 2018. Freshman place-kicker Massimo Biscardi ranked 33rd in FG efficiency, and sophomore punter Charles Ouverson averaged 43.1 yards and ranked 56th in punt efficiency.

Granted, coverage was an issue on both punts and (especially) kickoffs, and Ky’Jon Tyler’s returns, though dangerous, were pretty inconsistent. Still, Coastal ranked 58th in Special Teams S&P+ and, with everyone back, should have a good opportunity to exceed that ranking this fall. This should be one of the best special teams units in the Sun Belt.

2019 outlook

So now Coastal attempts to settle in a bit. The Chants’ first two seasons at the FBS level have been full of transition, un-transition, and re-transition, and the product on the field has been limited by injury and inexperience.

The offensive upside here is obvious, but defense remains the obvious question mark: Coastal is projected 79th in Off. S&P+ but 127th in Def. S&P+. The makes the Chanticleers 116th overall, but thanks to a schedule with eight opponents projected 96th or worse (five of which have to visit CCU), a bowl run isn’t completely out of reach. There are five likely losses, one likely win, and six games projected within a touchdown. If Coastal can upset either EMU or Kansas early in the season, a 4-2 start isn’t out of the question.

More likely, though, is that this simply becomes the year in which Coastal attains some level of stability and begins building in earnest. Chadwick’s got a lot of sophomores around which to build, but that might not result in any major breakthrough for another year or two.

Moglia’s back story and building job were fascinating, but now it’s on Chadwick to start pushing the boulder forward.

Team preview stats

All 2019 preview data to date.