Northwestern football: Jeff Genyk hired as special teams coordinator

Northwestern football has hired Jeff Genyk as its special teams coordinator, Pat Fitzgerald announced on Twitter Friday afternoon.

This hire keeps with the theme of bringing back people who have spent time in Evanston as Fitz has remade his staff this offseason. While not a former player like Tim McGarigle or Lou Ayeni, Genyk was a Northwestern assistant coach from 1994-2003 as the Wildcats won or shared three Big Ten titles.

Genyk left NU to take the head coach job at Eastern Michigan, where he was 16-42 over 5 seasons. Since then, he’s bounced around assistant coaching jobs, most recently coaching running backs and special teams at Vanderbilt for the past two seasons. Prior to that, he was a quality control coach for Northwestern’s 10-win 2015 team. The 57-year old Genyk played QB at Bowling Green from 1978 to 1981.

Northwestern’s staff is now complete after an offseason of turnover. Genyk, McGarigle, and Ayeni fill the spots of departed Jerry Brown and Randy Bates and the NCAA’s newly-allowed 10th assistant.

I could be wrong, but I think this is the first time in the Fitz era that Northwestern will have an assistant fully focused on special teams. That could help a unit that hasn’t finished higher than 77th in S&P+ since 2012, when it was 62nd.