Rob Ryan is best known for the 20-plus years he’s spent bouncing around NFL staffs, but the 62-year-old son of Buddy Ryan (and brother of Rex) has a college football background. He made his official return to college ball on Saturday, as the newest member of Lincoln Riley’s staff at USC.
“Rob Ryan is one of the most accomplished defensive coaches in NFL history,” Riley said in a statement. “With over two decades of NFL experience, he will immediately bolster our staff as we continue our climb here at USC. He has coached some of the NFL’s top players, including numerous Hall of Famers and All-Pro selections. We’re thrilled to welcome Coach Ryan and his family to our program.”
We got our guy🤝
NFL veteran coach and 2X Super Bowl champion @flowlikerob has been hired as Assistant Head Coach for Defense/Linebackers coach🏈 pic.twitter.com/qX8OgT3oro
— USC Football ✌️ (@uscfb) January 18, 2025
Ryan has a longstanding relationship with USC defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn, a rising star in the sport. The two coached together with the Buffalo Bills in 2016 and Baltimore Ravens in ’21. Lynn, who recently signed an extension after his first season with the Trojans, and Riley added Ryan to take the place of Matt Entz, now the head coach at Fresno State. He will have the title of assistant head coach and coach linebackers.
Ryan, who played defensive line at Southwestern Oklahoma State, began his coaching career in college as a graduate assistant for Western Kentucky in 1987. He moved on to the same role at Ohio State the following year, before landing on staff at Tennessee State (1989 to ’93), serving in a variety of assistant coaching roles. He left college for the Arizona Cardinals in ’94, but returned as the defensive coordinator at Hutchinson Community College in ’96. He held the same role at Oklahoma State from ’97 to ’99, before leaving college for the NFL once again, taking the linebackers job under Bill Belichick with the New England Patriots in 2000. Ryan spent the last three seasons as a senior defensive assistant with the Las Vegas Raiders.
Now, Ryan is back in college football for the first time since the ’90s, and will try and help elevate a USC defense that took strides under Lynn in ’24, as Riley attempts to get the program back on track. The Trojans went from ranking 105th in ESPN’s defensive SP+ metric at the end of the 2023–24 season to 46th in the current SP+ rankings, though the team finished just 7–6 in its first Big Ten campaign.
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