Ryan Grubb Named Offensive Coordinator & QB Coach

It was always likely that Kalen DeBoer would bring some of his assistant coaching staff with him and the most likely of those candidates was his offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb. Today Grubb announced on social media that he will in fact be joining DeBoer and replacing John Donovan as the full-time OC and QB coach for the Huskies. Washington publicly announced that Grubb has been hired within an hour of Grubb’s post.

The duo of DeBoer and Grubb have been together for a long long time. After a few years as an assistant at South Dakota State, Grubb in 2007 became the offensive line coach at NAIA Sioux Falls when DeBoer was the head coach. However Grubb stayed when DeBoer went to Southern Illinois and became the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for Sioux Falls. When DeBoer was hired as the OC at Eastern Michigan he called Grubb to re-join him and Grubb was once again the OL coach while DeBoer was the OC. After 3 seasons at EMU DeBoer brought Grubb with him one more time to be the OL coach at Fresno State.

There finally was a divergence when DeBoer had his one year stint at Indiana in 2019. Grubb took over for DeBoer as the OC at Fresno State after Kalen’s departure and had play calling duties. When DeBoer came back as the head coach he left Grubb installed as the OC but had him coach the quarterbacks rather than the offensive line. That means if you go all the way back to Grubb’s days at South Dakota State he has coached every offensive position group except for tight ends at some point in his career.

Grubb ultimately has been hired to the exact same roles that he held at Fresno State under DeBoer: OC and QB Coach. Throughout his career it’s clear to say that Grubb has the most experience coaching offensive line so that also seemed a distinct possibility. However it seems that DeBoer is trying not to rock the boat by keeping the previous arrangement which had been working at Fresno. It’s also the same split of duties that the Huskies have had recently with less consistent results. We’ll see now whether DeBoer opts to hire a new OL coach or keep Scott Huff and his recruiting prowess hoping he can change things around on the field in a new system and with Grubb’s assistance.

There have been plenty of rumors in the last week about who will occupy the rest of the assistant coaching staff underneath DeBoer but we are still waiting for more dominoes to fall. We’ll have more for you as those positions are filled either through outside hire or the current Washington staff being retained.