The Bruins have officially made an addition to their offensive staff.
UCLA Football announced Wednesday morning that it had hired Duke quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator Jeff Faris as its new tight ends coach. Faris has spent the last 14 years at Durham, first as a player and then as a coach over the past decade.
Faris will step in and replace Derek Sage, who was the Bruins tight ends coach for the past four seasons, until he left earlier in January to become Nevada’s next offensive coordinator.
While with the Blue Devils, Faris held multiple different positions, starting with the wide receivers coach in 2014, then the offensive recruiting coordinator in 2017, and transitioning to the tight-ends coach in 2018. Faris became the quarterbacks coach. , co-offensive coordinator and primary game-caller for Duke in 2021 as part of a staff change by coach David Cutcliffe, who was fired earlier this off-season after 14 years in Durham.
Faris, who signed up to play safety at Duke the same year as Cutcliffe, will therefore leave school in the wake of the man who brought him there more than a decade ago.
The addition of Faris means three of UCLA’s six coaching openings have already been filled, with Chad Kauha’aha’a and Ikaika Molloe replacing Johnny Nansen and Jason Kaufusi as defensive and outside linebackers coaches respectively, after the pair left for Arizona. in Dec. Offensive Coordinator and Offensive Lines Coach Justin Frye’s positions are still vacant after he left for Ohio state, while no replacement has been named for resigning Defensive Coordinator Jerry Azzinaro. Sage’s dual role as special teams coordinator also remains unfulfilled.
Like Kauha’aha’a and Molloe, Faris has a solid reputation as a recruiter and has similarly helped develop and produce talent on the field. Faris was named the 2018 AFCA Assistant Coach of the Year, which no UCLA position coach has ever won since its inception in 1997.
In his time as a tight ends coach, Faris led Daniel Helm, Davis Koppenhaver and Noah Gray, the latter of which was a fifth round in the 2021 NFL Draft, with the former two both signing unsigned free agent contracts. Sage guided Caleb Wilson, Devin Asiasi and Greg Dulcich to NFL futures during his time at Westwood, so it looks like UCLA’s tight pipeline has a chance to hold up under Faris.
Faris also worked with several record-setting receivers at Duke, most notably Jamison Crowder. More recently, Faris recruited, coached and befriended Jake Bobo, who transferred from Duke to UCLA earlier this season.
The 6-foot-5 Bobo racked up 801 yards on 74 receptions en route to an All-ACC Third Team spot in 2021, and with receivers Kyle Philips, Chase Cota and Keontez Lewis no longer at UCLA, he has a chance to move to the right. to go in and match that production in blue and gold this coming season.
Faris will primarily work in 2022 with tight ends Michael Ezeike, Mike Martinez and David Priebe, alongside incoming four-star recruits Carsen Ryan and Jack Pedersen. The playing duties Faris had at Duke for a year will be taken up by coach Chip Kelly, who has handled that aspect for as long as he has been with the Bruins, leading them to a top-10 foul in 2021.
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