The Virginia Tech Hokies have interviewed plenty of candidates to replace Aaron Moorehead as wide receiver coach over the last couple of weeks. A couple of coaches also received multiple interviews including Old Dominion's Zohn Burden who emerged as the frontrunner early on in the process.
Today, the Hokies have announced their new wide receiver coach and it is not a major surprise.
Zohn Burden named Virginia Tech wide receivers coach: Virginia native brings strong recruiting ties http://t.co/ljmBeCvV10
— VT Football (@VT_Football) February 2, 2015
Burden is another young WR coach at 31-years old, but Burden has some previous experience as a WR coach unlike Aaron Moorehead who was a graduate assistant at Stanford before his hiring.
Burden seems to be a rising name as a wide receiver coach, and that is largely due to his prolific recruiting in the 757 for Old Dominion. Based on his 247 Sports page, Burden has gotten 8 Class of 2015 commits as a primary recruiter for Old Dominion which is extremely impressive.
Some of that recruiting success includes a few mid-level three-star recruits like wide receiver Quincy Watts who had offers from some power conference programs including Virginia, Duke, and Indiana. It will be interesting to see if the Hokies offer Watts now and try to get him before Wednesday's National Signing Day especially since the Hokies have zero Class of 2015 WR commits.
Zohn Burden was also the passing game coordinator for the Monarchs, and saw the ODU passing game rank 30th in the nation this past season which is quite good given the fact that ODU hasn't been in FBS very long.
Burden also has built a good development reputation especially after Antonio Vaughn was All-Conference USA First Team this past season. Burden also did a great job of developing more than just Vaughn with ODU's Zack Pascal earning All-Conference USA honorable mention honors also.
Burden will now get the chance to work with some extremely talented wide receivers in Isaiah Ford and Cam Phillips. Burden was definitely a very talented recruiter and coach at ODU so it should be interesting to see if he can continue building on the foundation that Aaron Moorehead built in Blacksburg.
The only concerns with Burden have to do with the fact that he has not been at any major programs previously with his highest coaching experience being at ODU and Richmond. Burden also has not done much recruiting outside of the 757 though I think that he has the recruiting chops to get it done away from his home turf.
This is a very exciting day for Virginia Tech football, and Zohn Burden definitely seems to be a great hire by Frank Beamer.
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