Tag: Doug Belk

Top-10 2025 safety from Florida, Hylton Stubbs, becomes USC’s fourth commit for March 24

USC gets more help in the secondary on a huge day of recruiting.

What a haul for USC, and it was just one day. Hylton Stubbs, a 6-foot-1, 180-pound four-star safety, is a legitimate top-10 safety in the 2025 Class. 247Sports (No. 10) and On3 (No. 6) have Stubbs as a top-10 prospect on the board.

Scouts praise his size and football IQ. He will need to bulk up, but if this offseason taught us anything, one winter with Bennie Wylie and Rachel Suba should fix that.

Stubbs echoes a familiar message being vocalized by USC recruits: development.

“I love what the coaches are doing. I love the way they’re sending kids to the league. They have a top safety going to the league,” he said in an interview with 247Sports.

This commitment follows commitments from Justus Terry (a flip from Georgia), Isaiah Gibson, and Dominick Kelly. The Trojans have gotten a lot of work done, and they’re telling everyone that the days of weak defenses and subpar attention to detail on that side of the ball are over.

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2026 four-star defensive back Dominick Kelly commits to USC, as Doug Belk scores a recruiting win

Doug Belk joins the fun on a huge USC recruiting Sunday.

The USC football recruiting haul on this huge Sunday continues to grow for the Trojans. Dominick Kelly, a four-star 2026 cornerback prospect from Tampa, has committed to USC. Doug Belk added a player to a future Trojan secondary.

The Trojans already loaded up on defensive recruits earlier on Sunday, with Justus Terry and Isaiah Gibson both committing to USC through the work (dawgwork!) of defensive line coach Eric Henderson. Aaron Donald visited the USC campus this weekend and gave a few short remarks on how good Eric Henderson is as a coach. That’s an amazing voice of support for the work the USC staff is doing on the defensive side of the ball. Crucially, it’s not just about Henderson, though. It doesn’t stop with him. Doug Belk now has a victory and some real momentum in his own right.

USC’s philosophical change under Lincoln Riley, from offense to defense — or at least, from not valuing defense to making defense a real priority — continues to manifest itself and deliver real results on the recruiting trail. USC has quickly rebranded itself as a school where defense and defensive player development are taken seriously.

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Lincoln Riley evaluation of USC secondary coach Doug Belk sums up USC football’s new approach

Doug Belk can recruit like Donte Williams but create the on-field accountability Williams never did cultivate at USC.

When Lincoln Riley talked to USC football reporters and beat writers a few weeks ago, he said something about new USC secondary coach Doug Belk which is worth noting.

Riley specifically said about Belk that “He does a great job of being able to relate to guys but holding them accountable in areas that are very important.”

USC’s previous defensive coaching staff had men who could relate to the modern athlete. Alex Grinch recruited Tackett Curtis to USC, and Curtis followed Grinch to Wisconsin this offseason after Grinch was fired by Lincoln Riley. Donte Williams is another coach from USC’s 2023 staff who formed very strong relationships with recruits. Williams was and is a skilled recruiter. Relatability is a strength Williams has.

However, while they figured out how to establish relationships in recruiting, Grinch and Williams did not establish accountability which led to discipline on the football field. Riley sees in Doug Belk a coach who can maintain the relatability of Grinch and Williams but create the accountability those two defensive coaches never did create at USC. This is why so many people are excited about Doug Belk specifically, and about the USC football staff on a general level in 2024.

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USC interim safeties coach Taylor Mays makes huge impression in Holiday Bowl

Taylor Mays replaced Donte Williams, and USC’s secondary took a huge leap forward. You do the math.

In the cover photo for this story, you can see Taylor Mays — in a USC uniform — making an authoritative tackle for the Trojans against Penn State in the 2009 Rose Bowl. That was the next-to-last great moment for the Pete Carroll dynasty. (The last great moment was the 2009 win at Ohio State.)

Taylor Mays was one of the special players of a special era for USC football. This year, he had a minor role on Lincoln Riley’s staff but got a much bigger chance to directly coach USC players after the regular season ended. Donte Williams went off to Georgia to recruit for Kirby Smart. This enabled Mays to step in and teach USC’s safeties in preparation for the Holiday Bowl against Louisville.

Donte Williams out. Taylor Mays in.

USC profited in a very big way. The math here is undeniable. Taylor Mays made a big statement. Now let’s talk about what this means for USC in 2024 and beyond:

What Doug Belk needs to do as a defensive back coach and recruiter at USC

Doug Belk has to match what D’Anton Lynn is doing.

USC announced former Houston defensive coordinator Doug Belk as the program’s next defensive backs coach last weekend. He replaces Donte Williams, who moved on to the Georgia Bulldogs.

Belk becomes the third defensive newcomer to Lincoln Riley’s coaching staff this offseason, joining new defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn and new linebacker coach Matt Entz.

“Doug Belk is another tremendous addition to our staff,” Riley said in a release. “His impressive body of work and reputation as a high-level coach and recruiter speak for themselves. I’m excited to welcome him to USC.”

Belk spent the previous five seasons at Houston, where he held the associate head coach/defensive coordinator role since 2021. In 2019 and 2020, he was a co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach.

In his time with the Cougars, Belk coached 13 All-AAC selections, including five first-teamers. He also coached eight All-Big 12 honorees, including two first-teamers.

Belk got his coaching start as a defensive assistant and then as a secondary coach at Valdosta State in 2011. He spent three seasons there before serving as a grad assistant at Alabama under Nick Saban from 2014-16.

In 2017, he was hired by Dana Holgorsen to be the corners coach at West Virginia. Belk spent two seasons with the Mountaineers before following Holgorsen to Houston in 2019. He was the safeties coach and co-DC at Houston during his first two seasons there.

Belk will need to keep the top secondary recruits in the nation interested in playing in the Big Ten and for USC.

LSU, Florida, Ohio State, Texas, Florida State and Alabama all have a claim to being “DBU.” In USC’s primes in both the 1970s and under Pete Carroll in the 2000s, the secondary was elite. Belk will need to keep that same energy in the recruiting and portal world.

D’Anton Lynn has brought multiple defensive backs from UCLA plus Akili Arnold from Oregon State. Belk needs to create his own pipline, whether from Houston or other places.

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Doug Belk will make USC fans forget about Donte Williams (and the recruits who left)

Doug Belk’s coaching will make it easy to let go of Donte Williams.

Doug Belk replaced Donte Williams at USC, becoming the new coach for the Trojans’ secondary. Donte Williams was a great recruiter, but his actual coaching did not give USC an edge on Saturdays in the fall. USC’s secondary was a profoundly disappointing position group on a very disappointing 2023 football team.

Doug Belk comes to USC from Houston, where he was the defensive coordinator under coach Dana Holgorsen. Belk is part of a defensive staff which gave up bigger roles and responsibilities to come to USC to join Lincoln Riley.

Matt Entz was a head coach — and a national champion — at North Dakota State. He gave that up to be linebacker coach for Riley and USC. Belk gave up a Power Five coordinator job to become a position coach at USC.

There’s a lot to talk about regarding Belk. Let’s begin that conversation by giving you a small sample of the reaction to his hiring, plus some analysis of why Belk is going to fit in nicely at USC:

Lincoln Riley, D’Anton Lynn bring in Doug Belk as new USC defensive back coach

Doug Belk was Houston’s defensive coordinator the past three seasons. USC is getting real coaching chops on defense.

The USC defensive staff makeover continues. Donte Williams has left the program, which means the Trojans and Lincoln Riley needed a new defensive back coach. Riley needed to give D’Anton Lynn more high-quality help.

Mission accomplished.

You will notice that USC has hired an FCS head coach as a linebacker coach (Matt Entz from North Dakota State). Now the Trojans have hired a defensive coordinator as a position coach.

Doug Belk, who has been the defensive coordinator at Houston the past three seasons, is coming aboard as USC’s defensive back coach.

Going from Houston to USC is an upward move … if we are talking about the same position at the two schools. However, going from a Power Five coordinator (Houston is now a Power Five program since the Cougars are in the Big 12) to a Power Five position coach job is, at best, a lateral move if not a downward one.

Riley and D’Anton Lynn are convincing coaches to take downward steps — purely in terms of roles within the coaching hierarchy (head coach-coordinator-position coach) — to come to USC. They have clearly sold Matt Entz and now Doug Belk on the value of coaching the Trojans and turning this program into a College Football Playoff program.

Donte Williams out and Doug Belk in? That seems like a dramatic coaching upgrade in the secondary for USC.

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Chargers interview two candidates for defensive coordinator job

The Chargers have a void to fill with their defensive coordinator position left by Renaldo Hill.

The Chargers have a void to fill with their defensive coordinator position left by Renaldo Hill, who joined the Dolphins to be their passing game coordinator and defensive backs coach.

On Wednesday, NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport reported that Los Angeles interviewed Patriots defensive line coach DeMarcus Covington and the University of Houston defensive coordinator Doug Belk for the job.

Covington has been with New England since 2017 and has coached the team’s defensive line since 2020. He started as a coaching assistant for two seasons and coached the outside linebackers in 2019.

Belk has been with Houston since 2019. He entered the program as co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach. He was promoted to associate head coach in 2020 and became defensive coordinator in 2021. He’s previously worked for West Virginia, Alabama, and Valdosta State.

Initially, after it was announced that Hill was leaving for Miami, it was reported that the plan was for defensive backs coach Derrick Ansley to be promoted to the Chargers’ defensive coordinator. But it appears they are still doing their homework.

Report: Billy Napier targeting two top defensive coordinators for his Florida staff

Here are two defensive coordinator targets for new Florida head coach Billy Napier’s staff.

Florida officially announced the hiring of Billy Napier to replace Dan Mullen as head coach on Sunday. Though Napier has one more week at Louisiana, where he will coach the Ragin’ Cajuns in the Sun Belt Championship against Appalachian State, he’s reportedly already targeting two top defensive coordinators for his staff at UF.

Per 247Sports’ Carl Reed, the two coaches that have emerged as candidates are Oklahoma State’s Jim Knowles and Houston’s Doug Belk.

Knowles is an experienced coach that has been around the block. At 56, he brings head coaching experience to the table (he was the head man at Cornell from 2004-09) and after that, he served as the defensive coordinator at Duke from 2010-17 under David Cutcliffe before taking his current job at Oklahoma State.

The Cowboys’ defense has been one of the more impressive turnarounds for a unit in college football this year, and it’s been a top 10 defense in college football this season (and the main reason the team now has a decent shot at making the College Football Playoff with a win in the Big 12 Championship against Baylor).

Belk, meanwhile, presents a much younger option. He began his career as an assistant at Valdosta State before joining Nick Saban’s Alabama staff as a graduate assistant in 2014, coaching the next three seasons alongside Napier, who was the receivers coach.

After two years as cornerbacks coach at West Virginia, he followed coach Dana Holgorsen to Houston, becoming the co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach for the Cougars. He was named assistant head coach in 2020, and the “co” part of his title was dropped this season.

He’s considered one of the up-and-coming defensive coaches in the country, and he could be a target for head coaching searches in the coming years.

Both of these hires would make a lot of sense for different reasons, and it’s clear that Napier is interested in aggressively going after top assistant coaches if these reports are accurate.

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