BATON ROUGE, La. – Southern hired Zack Grossi as their new offensive coordinator, and although he was initially interviewed to be the Jags’ next quarterbacks coach, the Concord alum impressed head coach Dawson Odums enough to earn his first job as an offensive coordinator.

“When he was interviewing, I really felt like he could be an offensive coordinator, and it just so happened that it worked out. He’s a great communicator, and he’s easy to work with. I’m just looking forward to seeing his guidance and tutelage of how well he gets our quarterbacks prepared just listening to him on Zoom,” Odums said.

Building relationships with those quarterbacks is going to be unique for Grossi because the team can’t meet in person. However, Odums found the delayed season favorable for developing player relations.

“We would’ve had to play this fall. We wouldn’t have had a chance to really build any kind of relationships with our team. Our team left in March. You come back. You hadn’t had a chance to build any continuity, and having the chance to bridge that gap and really build those relationships, really give us a spring we didn’t have by flipping the season. I think it’s going to be beneficial to every team in the conference that may have had some substitutes or some new guys coming in or new coaches as well,” Odums added.

Although the Jaguars’ run heavy offense led the team to repeat division titles, Odums is open to changes heading into the spring.

“Coach Grossi said the other day ‘well, I know if coach over here we better run the football.’ I said nah it’s just that we got some very good running backs and our offensive line has always been a strength. We got some receivers that can make plays, and we got quarterbacks that can get the ball down the field. I look for us to be in the Spread-RPO offense and continue to attack what defenses give us.”

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