Any celebrating Nebraska football fans were doing about UCLA seemingly being a bit hamstrung after the abrupt departure of Chip Kelly, might have been premature. On Saturday evening, the Bruins announced they got a heck of a fire for their new head coach.
Former UCLA star running back and assistant coach DeShaun Foster was named the Bruins head man earlier this month. Now he’s got a superstar as an offensive coordinator. The former Pac-12 and new Big Ten program has hired Eric Bieniemy as the team’s offensive coordinator and associate head coach.
The hiring is an especially interesting one considering that it means the Nebraska football team will once again be going up against a man who was quite a thorn in the side of the Husker program when he was a running back for the Colorado Buffaloes.
He was on the CU teams that gave Tom Osborne fits after decades of Nebraska barely giving the Buffs a second thought on a yearly basis. That’s one wrinkle. The other is that he might already be the most decorated, respected offensive coordinator in the Big Ten.
Bieniemy has spent most of his coaching career in the NFL and helped lead the Kansas City Chiefs to their first Super Bowl win in decades when he was the offensive coordinator under head coach Andy Reid.
After spending several years interviewing in the NFL for just about every head coaching opening that came along in the last five years at least, he moved to the Washington Commanders for the 2023 season.
His one and only season in Washington did not go as expected. He was brought in as a way to get former head coach Ron Rivera a bit of a lift. Instead Bieniemy was fired with the rest of the staff when Rivera was let go.
In joining the current UCLA staff, it marks a return for the former Nebraska football enemy. The Bruins were the last team that Bieniemy coached in the college ranks. He spent the 2003, 2004 and 2005 seasons in LA before making the up to the NFL as the program’s running backs coach.
The Nebraska football team will take on Eric Bieniemy and the new look UCLA Bruins on November 2.