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One of the many coaching staff moves made by the New Orleans Saints this offseason was expanding quarterbacks coach Ronald Curry’s responsibilities with the title of passing game coordinator. Curry has been on the Saints coaching staff since 2016 where he started as an offensive assistant working with wide receivers. Every year since, he’s moved to a new role on an upward trajectory that looks to be priming him to step into an offensive coordinator position in the next few years.
Before Curry began his ascension through coaching ranks (first with the San Francisco 49ers in 2015) he was a two-sport star athlete of legend for the UNC Tar Heels. He was a dual-threat quarterback who passed for 4,987 yards while rushing for 1,249. He also added 41 career combined touchdowns with 35 interceptions and a 113.1 career passer rating. This was all while undergoing several coaching changes including three offensive coordinators. He set records for most career passing yards and total yards and was named MVP of the 1998 Las Vegas Bowl and later the 2001 Peach Bowl.
All of that was on the gridiron. Curry also played guard for the Tar Heels basketball team where he averaged 20.6 minutes per game with 4.2 points and 3.0 assists per contest as well.
His success stretches all the way back to high school, too. Curry is still regarded as one of the greatest Virginia high school football players of all time. As a quarterback he led his Hampton High School squad to three straight state championships, shattering several records along the way. He also helped lift Hampton’s basketball team to a state title in 1998. That’s four straight years of state titles in which that Curry took huge part. He was so good, that fellow Virginia native and arguably one of the best to play quarterback in the NFL Michael Vick has always given him praise.
After Curry’s high school and collegiate success, his career took a turn in the NFL. After being drafted by the then-Oakland Raiders in the seventh round of the 2002 NFL draft as a quarterback, Curry moved to wide receiver before his second season. He got off to a fast start with 50 catches for 679 yards that season, but unfortunately suffered an Achilles injury that ended his first year at wideout prematurely.
After working his way back in 2005, when Achilles injuries had a much higher rate of re-injury than we have seen in the NFL recently, he suffered the same tear in the second week of the season. After that, Curry continued to fight his way back having some shining moments including 16-game appearances in 2006 and 2007 wherein each he reeled in over 700 receiving yards on 55 or more catches. But ultimately, his run with Oakland came to an end in 2008 and despite signing with the Detroit Lions and then-St. Louis Rams, he wouldn’t find the field again.
Soon after things didn’t pan out with the Rams, Curry lathed on to a high school coaching opportunity before starting his NFL trajectory. That decision has since paid off as he’s on a meteoric rise within the New Orleans Saints coaching staff. After starting as an offensive assistant in 2016, he was moved up to a wide receivers coach in 2018, to quarterbacks coach in 2021, and now adds passing game coordinator to that title here in 2022.
In 2021, Curry helped to prepared four different starting quarterbacks to take the field for the Saints: Jameis Winston, Trevor Siemian, Taysom Hill, and rookie Ian Book. According to Book, who will go into his second year with Curry in 2022, Curry took him under his wing and has been a sizable influence on him.
“I felt like I was his guy,” Book told me at Radio Row before the Super Bowl in Los Angeles, “He took me under his wing immediately. He was always willing to work with me extra hours, which was awesome for me. I needed someone like that.”
Curry’s playing career has been a huge benefit for the quarterbacks and wideouts he’s coached as well. Book credited his playing experience not just at all levels, but at multiple positions for the excitement he feels to work with Curry again in 2022. The New Orleans Saints website lauds the seven-year coach for his 2018 and 2019 work with the record-breaking Michael Thomas:
“In 2019, Curry helped Thomas shatter the NFL’s receptions record and club receiving yardage records as he posted 149 receptions for 1,725 yards and nine touchdowns as he was selected Associated Press NFL Offensive Player of the Year. He was selected as an AP first-team All-Pro and Pro Bowl starter for the second consecutive season.
In 2018, Thomas recorded a NFL-best 125 grabs for 1,405 yards and nine touchdowns. He also developed third-round pick Smith, who was named NFL Rookie of the Week after a ten reception, 157-yard, one touchdown performance in Week 11.”
Now, as quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator, it will be Curry’s responsibility to coordinate a passing attack by not only working with the signal callers, but the pass catchers again as well. A role that Curry has shown comfort in not just in New Orleans, but also working with a legendary receiver like Anquan Bolden. With Curry’s help, Bolden topped 1,000 yards receiving two straight seasons (2013-14) becoming the first 49er to pass that mark since Terrell Owens.
The fast pace at which Curry is climbing is of no surprise to anyone paying attention to former Saints head coach Sean Payton over the years. In December of 2020, Payton described the qualities of a successful head coach with NFL Network correspondents Steve Wyche and Jim Trotter on their Huddle and Flow podcast.
Payton told Wyche and Trotter that being a good teacher, communicator, and expert of the craft are atop his list when looking at coaching success. He also specifically referenced the need for a coach to be authentic. Perfectly timed as Payton, Wyche, and Trotter were having a candid conversation around the the NFL’s hiring practices which Payton called “awful” relative to the hiring of coaches of color. A cycle in which Curry could one day find himself wrapped up someday soon.
Those three qualities are evident in Book’s praise of Curry. From staying extra hours to work with him to Curry’s experience at all levels of the game and multiple positions, it is easy to see why Payton and the Saints have seen promise Curry has to offer. Payton highlighted that further when multiple New Orleans media members caught up with him in Los Angeles during Super Bowl week.
“Ronald’s the best,” Payton told me in our walk and talk. “He’s done a great job. I’ve been with him for a while, you know? He’s one of those rare two-sport athletes. North Carolina football, basketball. He’s a tremendous person and someone that was a big help to us and helped us win a lot of games.”
In an offseason in which so many questions have been raised around the potential of black head coaching candidates in the NFL thanks to Brian Flores’s challenging of the league’s hiring practices, it worth a moment to take stock in the talent across all 32 teams.
In particular, the New Orleans Saints have helped to introduce names to the running not only at head coach, but also with front office executives like Terry Fontenot, now general manager of the Atlanta Falcons, and cap guru Khai Hartley who is expected to see similar opportunities soon. Even former position coaches like Aaron Glenn are being called the “new leader” in the Black head coach search. Glenn interviewed for the Saints’ head coaching job this past offseason.
If all goes well, the Saints could help to launch the career trajectory of Curry in a similar direction. Possibly newly-hired wide receivers coach Kodi Burns after that. Curry’s next step should be offensive coordinator in coming years. Whether that’s with New Orleans or another lucky team remains to be seen. But as passing game coordinator this season, he’ll gather an intimate knowledge of how to build an offense right beside offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael. After that, the sky’s the limit for coach Curry.
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