Alabama makes assistant coach hiring official

Alabama announced Monday that it is hiring former Charlotte coach Joe Cox as the Crimson Tide’s newest tight ends coach, confirming an earlier report from On3’s Matt Zenitz.

“We are excited to add Joe Cox to our staff to coach tight ends,” head coach Nick Saban said. “Joe is an outstanding young coach who possesses extensive experience coaching tight ends. He has tremendous enthusiasm for teaching the game of football and is a great recruiter who works tirelessly at his craft.”

Cox was hired by Charlotte prior to the 2021 season, where the former Gatorade North Carolina Player of the Year returned to his home state. In Will Healy’s third year at the helm of the 49ers, Cox contributed to a 5-7 campaign in which Charlotte’s offense produced 253 passing yards per game and 27 passing touchdowns all season.

Cox, 35, spent the 2020 season as South Carolina’s wide receivers coach, working under then-head coach Will Muschamp and then-offensive coordinator Mike Bobo. While working with South Carolina’s wide receivers, Cox helped produced Shi Smith, who had his best performance as a senior for South Carolina. Despite only playing in nine games, Smith reeled in 57 receptions for 633 receiving yards and four touchdowns; he was eventually selected in the sixth-round of the 2021 NFL Draft, taken off the board with the 204th-overall pick by the Carolina Panthers.

“I’m beyond excited to join a program with this type of tradition and commitment to excellence,” Cox said. “It is an honor and privilege to have the opportunity to work for and learn from Coach Saban. I can’t wait to get to work with this staff and the young men on this football team.”

Prior to South Carolina, Cox served a five-year stint at Colorado State. He first served as a graduate assistant for one season with the Rams, before working his way up to tight ends coach from 2016-2018, then moving on to coach the wide receivers in 2019.

While with Colorado State, Cox again worked under Bobo, then the head coach of the Rams, and helped the program turn in one of its most productive seasons in history. Colorado State posted two of the top five scoring seasons in program history during his tenure, averaging 35.3 points per game in 2016 (third-best in Colorado State history) and 33.4 points per game in 2017 (fifth-best in school history). Additionally, while working with Colorado State’s wide receivers in 2019, Cox and the Rams ranked 14th in the nation in passing offense, throwing for an average of 305.3 yards per game, and wide receiver Warren Jackson averaged 111.9 receiving yards per game, coupled with 77 receptions and eight touchdowns in 10 games.

Cox got his start in coaching shortly after graduating from the University of Georgia. He returned close to home at Mallard Creek High School in Charlotte, N.C., in 2013, where he served as the quarterbacks coach. He was promoted to offensive coordinator in 2014, and he helped lead Mallard Creek to back-to-back state championships.

Much of Cox’s coaching career has been under Bobo, both at South Carolina and Colorado State, and given his college playing career, it’s easy to see why — Cox played college football at Georgia, and he assumed the starting role in 2009, when Bobo served as the Bulldogs’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. As Georgia’s quarterback, Cox completed 185-of-331 passing attempts for 2,584 yards and 24 touchdowns, which at the time was the second-best single-season total in school history.