Multiple reports have emerged that Virginia Tech will hire Jacksonville Jaguars TEs coach Tyler Bowen as their next offensive coordinator with the hire becoming official after the conclusion of the Jaguars' season with Matt Zenitz of On3 being the first to report the news.
Virginia Tech is expected to hire Jacksonville Jaguars assistant coach Tyler Bowen as offensive coordinator at the conclusion of the Jaguars' season, sources tell @On3sports.
— Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) December 9, 2021
Bowen worked with new Va Tech head coach Brent Pry at Penn State.https://t.co/Bu2WXKE9Bt
Bowen has only been with the Jaguars for a year after spending three seasons at Penn State from 2018-2020 where he was the TEs coach and the offensive recruiting coordinator for all three seasons, and the co-offensive coordinator in 2020. He was also a GA at Penn State in 2014 with two years at Fordham after that including as the offensive coordinator in 2016 and a year as the OL coach at Maryland in 2017.
There's no doubt that Bowen is considered a rising coach in the business and also has proven to be a very strong recruiter with Penn State consistently having top 15 classes while he was the offensive recruiting coordinator. Bowen also fits Brent Pry's intent to focus on the recruiting the "footprint" which includes Maryland and the Washington D.C. metro where Bowen had plenty of success at Penn State.
His time at Penn State as the offensive recruiting coordinator also overlaps with the time where the Nittany Lions landed some elite talents from Virginia including standout RBs Ricky Slade and Devyn Ford.
There is some risk as Bowen has never been the lead offensive coordinator at the Power 5 level or an offensive coordinator under a defensive-minded head coach. However, Bowen has shown promise when given the chance as he was the interim offensive coordinator in the 2019 Cotton Bowl for Penn State when the Nittany Lions put up 53 points on Memphis which is a show of promise of how well he can do as the offensive coordinator.
Bowen, like Chris Marve, is 32 years old and will almost certainly give Virginia Tech the youngest pair of offensive and defensive coordinators at the Power 5 level and maybe across all of FBS.
We will have more as this story develops.