Penn State football hires Stacy Collins as special teams coordinator
One day after special teams coordinators Joe Lorig left Penn State football for Oregon, the Nittany Lions have found his replacement.
Stacy Collins has been named the program’s special teams coordinator/outside linebackers/nickels coach in a release by the program.
“As a veteran coach, Stacy brings a wide variety of experiences to our staff having served as a head coach, defensive coordinator and special teams coordinator during his career,” Penn State head coach James Franklin said in a statement. “He will bring significant value to our program and has a great depth of special teams knowledge and has found great success as a coordinator.”
Collins spent the 2021 season with Boise State and has spent most of his career out west.
Like Lorig, Collins got his start at Western Oregon where he played college football as a linebacker from 1993-1997. He then became the program’s special teams coordinator/linebackers coach from 1998-2001 while also being the defensive coordinator of the Vienna Vikings in Vienna, Austria from 1999-2001.
Collins was at myriad schools from 2002-2011, coaching special teams and defense at South Dakota Mines, special teams and linebackers at Western Washington, linebackers at Idaho State, defense at Southern Oregon, special teams, defensive line and linebackers at Central Washington and special teams at Portland State all in that time frame.
He became the head coach at South Dakota Mines in 2012 where he remained until 2015, going 16-27 with two winning seasons in his four seasons.
He then spent five seasons at Utah State, coaching different positions throughout his time with the Aggies. In 2016 he was the special teams coordinator before being the inside linebackers coach in 2017 and 2018, the special teams coordinator and running backs coach in 2019 and then the co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach in 2020.
Collins left Utah State in January 2021 to join Boise State as its special teams coordinator and edge coach.
His lone season with Boise State led to hit special teams group blocking three punts, good for seventh in the country, and four kicks, good for ninth in the country. His kicker, Jonah Dalmas, finished the year as a Lou Groza award semifinalist, which is awarded to the nation’s best kicker.
Collins is the second addition to the coaching staff this offseason after Manny Diaz was brought on to replace longtime Penn State defensive coordinator Brent Pry, who left to become the head coach at Virginia Tech.
The new special teams coordinator has overlap with Lorig outside of their two seasons together as players at Western Oregon in 1994 and 1995. They overlapped at the program again as coaches in 1998 and at Central Washington from 2008-2010.
This story was originally published January 4, 2022 at 1:30 PM.
