While not exactly unprecedented, Sonny Dykes has still taken a unique approach in filling a hole on his Cal coaching staff.
Over the weekend, Cal announced that Garrett Chachere will coach the Golden Bears’ running backs in 2016. What makes the in-house move so unique is the fact that Chachere has spent the past two seasons as Cal’s linebackers coach; the season before that, he was Cal’s defensive ends coach.
Chachere is not coming into this switch completely blind, though, as he spent 2009-11 as an offensive assistant at Arizona. His last year with the Wildcats, Chachere served as running backs coach. His first two years, he was in charge of wide receivers.
With Chachere vacating his linebackers post, defensive coordinator Art Kaufman will assume those duties.
“These moves will strengthen our coaching staff,” Dykes said. “Garret is an outstanding teacher who will do a fantastic job as our running backs coach. He has a tremendous amount of expertise with this offense from his time on the coaching staff at Arizona and that was critical to us being able to make these moves. Garret is quite comfortable with this offense. He speaks the same language as the rest of the staff, and I am extremely confident that he will fit right in and be on the same page with [new offensive coordinator] Jake Spavital and all of our coaches on the offensive side of the ball.
“This also gives Art the opportunity to work directly with a position group that he has coached successfully for most of his career.”
Cal noted in its release that “Kaufman has 28 seasons of experience working with linebackers in his 34 campaigns as a collegiate coach.”
Chachere will take over the job previously held by Tony Franklin. Last month, Franklin abruptly left his main role as offensive coordinator to take the same job at Middle Tennessee State.