Rutgers formally announced Pat Flaherty as offensive line coach on Wednesday afternoon. It was first reported by Brian Fonseca, Steve Politi and Pat Lanni of NJ Advance Media. He replaces Augie Hoffman on the staff. Flaherty joins wide receiver coach Dave Brock and offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca as new additions to the Rutgers coaching staff. Two returning assistants, Damiere Shaw and Andrew Aurich, shift to coach the running backs and tight ends respectively.
“Pat is a highly-respected coach and someone I have known for a long time,” Schiano said. “His experience will be beneficial to the development of our offensive line. We all know the Big Ten is a line-of-scrimmage league and Pat understands what it takes to be successful at the highest level.”
“I want to thank Coach Schiano for the opportunity to be back on the Rutgers staff,” Flaherty said. “I know the players and staff here are working hard to make the state of New Jersey proud. There’s plenty of potential with this offensive line and we will strive to make progress every day.”
Flaherty has 40 years of coaching experience and was exclusively at the college level from 1980-1999. That included a long stint at Rutgers from 1984-1991 as an offensive line assistant. He came from Penn State with former head coach Dick Anderson and stayed through the beginning of the Doug Graber era. Flaherty spent time at East Carolina, Wake Forest and Iowa before moving onto the NFL at the start of this century.
He is best known for his decade plus run as offensive line coach for the New York Giants. Flaherty served that role from 2004-2015 which was the entire tenure of former head coach Tom Coughlin. He coached former Rutgers walk-on Sean O’Hara and was part of two Super Bowl winning teams.
After serving as offensive line coach with three more NFL teams, Flaherty has not been an active coach since 2019.
As an offensive analyst, Flaherty worked for Penn State in 2019 and 2020, with the second season being when Ciarrocca served as offensive coordinator. Flaherty has been a consultant for head coach Greg Schiano over last season at Rutgers. That obviously will help with his transition into his new role with the program.
Overall, Rutgers has now hired three assistants with plenty of coaching experience to overhaul an offense that has been one of the worst in college football for an extended period of time. The offensive line has long been an issue. Flaherty is certainly a veteran coach with plenty of valuable experience to offer his position group. Being able to adapt to coaching college players again after two plus decades in the pros will be the key to having success at Rutgers.
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Rutgers 1972
February 1, 2023 at 4:49 pm
Love GS migration back to our roots. Run the ball. Wimsatt is here
and can succeed in such an offense. 3 capable hires. A great first step.
pj43
February 1, 2023 at 8:00 pm
Schiano has obviously placed an emphasis on experience in his offensive hires. I’m assuming that he’s more confident now about turning over the offense to these assistants as he tends to the defensive size of the ball. This, to me, reflects his belief that this coming season is critical to show progress after last season’s step backward. That progress will be measured by by the degree of improvement by the offense. How quickly that can realistically happen, if at all, will be interesting to see.