LSU expected to hire FCS defensive line coach as analyst

LSU is expected to hire Kennesaw State defensive ends coach Kynjee Cotton as an analyst, sources tell On3.

Cotton, a former Alabama State all-conference defensive lineman and team captain, was the defensive ends coach at Samford for three seasons before Kennesaw. He was previously defensive ends coach at West Georgia.

That came after a stint as a quality control coach at North Carolina (2016-17) and stop as a defensive line coach at Birmingham Southern (2015), as a graduate assistant at UAB (2014) and as a strength and conditioning intern at Alabama (2013).

Cotton will seemingly be the replacement for ex-LSU defensive line analyst Gerald Chatman, who left the Tigers in May to become the defensive line coach at Tulane.

LSU is entering its second season under Brian Kelly after finishing last season 10-4.

Kennesaw State, meanwhile, has been a respectable program at the FCS level for several years under head coach Brian Bohannon and will move up to the FBS level as a member of Conference USA in 2024.

Before a 5-6 mark last season, the Owls were 56-13 the previous six seasons under Bohannon.

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The 2022-23 coaching cycle

For the seventh time in the last eight coaching cycles, there were more than 20 head coaching changes at the FBS level.

The only exception during this stretch that dates back to the 2015-16 coaching cycle was following the COVID season in 2020, when there were 18 FBS head coaching changes.

During the 2022-23 cycle, there were 24 head coaching changes. That includes 11 at the Power Five level, headlined by hires such as Deion Sanders at Colorado, Matt Rhule at Nebraska, Hugh Freeze at Auburn and Luke Fickell at Wisconsin.

Other Power Five head coaching changes came at places such at Arizona State, Cincinnati, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Mississippi State, Purdue and Stanford.

It came after there were 30 head coaching changes during the 2021-22 coaching cycle, which included Lincoln Riley being hired at USC, Brian Kelly being tabbed as the new head coach at LSU and Marcus Freeman then being selected as his replacement for the Fighting Irish. 

There were also other moves like Billy Napier replacing Dan Mullen at Florida, Brent Venables being hired at Oklahoma following Riley’s departure, Mario Cristobal leaving Oregon for Miami and Dan Lanning being hired as Cristobal’s replacement at Oregon after helping Georgia win the national championship as the defensive coordinator of the Bulldogs’ dominant defense.

The only other recent coaching cycles with more than 24 head coaching changes were the 2018-19 cycle with 28 and the 2015-16 cycle with 29.