STARKVILLE — Brian Johnson will finally get to work with Dan Mullen.
Multiple sources inside the Mississippi State football program confirmed to The Dispatch Friday evening, Johnson, Utah’s quarterbacks coach, has agreed to join the Bulldogs coaching staff. Johnson will serve in the same position in Starkville as he did last season with the Utes.
Johnson was recruited to Utah by the MSU head coach and as a freshman in 2004, Johnson saw action in ten games as back-up to Heisman Trophy finalist Alex Smith. However, the MSU coach never got to coach Johnson as a starting quarterback as Urban Meyer brought Mullen from Utah to Florida in that 2004 offseason.
Johnson was the starting quarterback for the Utes in a 31-17 upset win against Alabama in the 2009 Sugar Bowl. Johnson led then No. 7 Utah with 336 passing yards and three passing touchdowns and was named the 2009 Sugar Bowl Most Outstanding Player.
Sources have confirmed to The Dispatch, Johnson will coach the quarterbacks at MSU but the rest of the details involving the titles and restructuring of the rest of the Bulldogs current coaching staff is still unknown at this time. Johnson was in Starkville Thursday to interview with Mullen and discuss his role to fill the vacancy on the coaching staff.
Johnson, who will turn 27 on Feb.16, was identified early as the leading candidate to fill the MSU coaching staff vacancy left when Les Koenning left Starkville to become the new wide receivers coach at Texas on Jan. 15.
Mullen said in a text message to the Dispatch MSU Sports Blog that nothing official had been decided yet in terms of filling the vacancy or restructuring of the titles of current staff members. An official announcement by the university of Johnson’s hiring and the titles of the entire staff is expected to take place Monday.
The Dispatch reported last week that Johnson was on a list of possible candidates to take over the open vacancy on the staff. Mullen still has to decide what he’ll do with a offensive coordinator title for one or multiple members of his staff and if anybody on the current MSU staff will be named special teams coordinator.
In his National Signing Day media conference, Mullen made no secret about how the offensive play calling happened during the 2013 season and will continue to operate in the future.
“I called all the plays for us last year. I spent a lot of time with the quarterbacks,” Mullen said Wednesday. “The two quarterbacks who are coming in know that I was sort of the quarterback coach anyway. They didn’t have to wait and see who it may be. Fortunately how that worked out it allowed us to take our time. Hopefully within the next week we’ll have something in place.”
Johnson, Utah’s winningest quarterback in history with a 26-7 record, became the youngest offensive coordinator in the Football Bowl Subdivision when coach Kyle Whittingham appointed the then 24-year-old to the position in 2011.
Johnson served as the Utes offensive coordinator at his alma mater for two seasons 2012 but after a disappointing 5-7 season his offense was called into question after just averaging 29.2 points per game, good for just ninth in the Pac-12 Conference. Subsequently, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham hired former Miami and NFL head coach Dennis Erickson as its new offensive coordinator and reassigned Johnson back to just coaching the Utes’ signal callers in 2013. Whittingham hired former Wyoming head coach Dave Christensen as its new offensive coordinator this offseason and it was after that move where Johnson began looking at other coaching situations around the country.
Follow Matt Stevens on Twitter @matthewcstevens.
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