TCU football goes internal route to replace departing coach Doug Meacham
After losing wide receivers coach Doug Meacham to Oklahoma State, TCU moved quickly to find his replacement, bumping up an internal candidate to replace Meacham.
Assistant tight ends coach Mitch Kirsch will be promoted full-time to tight ends coach and fill the void left by Meacham, who will be the offensive coordinator for the Cowboys in Stillwater.
Kirsch has been with Sonny Dykes for a number of years now and he believes it could be a seamless transition.
“Mitch has been six or seven years now, really good football coach with a great mind,” Dykes said. “He’s a really good recruiter and a teacher on the field. I really like what he’s grown into. He’s one of those guys when we first had him at SMU, we knew we had a lot of potential.
“He was one of those young guys that when he got around and you’re like okay this guy is really smart. He’s grown every single year as a coach.”
Kirsch was a standout offensive lineman at James Madison in the late 2010s and was a consensus FCS All-American in 2016 while helping James Madison win a national championship. He was also voted the Virginia Collegiate Athlete of the Year in 2017.
After signing as an undrafted free agent with the Bears, Kirsch joined Dykes at SMU in 2018 as a graduate assistant. His time as a high level football player could be valuable to the future Horned Frogs that will play tight end.
“He played o-line, so he really understands the blocking part of the position,” Dykes said. “He’s been around some good receiver coaches that have taught him wide receiver play. To me he’s kind of the perfect mix of that hand in the ground and come off the ball mentality that you want your tight ends to have, but he also understands the passing game well enough to coach that at a high level.
“He’s really sharp, he’ll do a really good job of recruiting. He’s a hustler, he’s organized and he’s smart. He’ll be a great addition.”
While promoting Kirsch to tight ends coach, Dykes is also restructuring the staff. There will be no more inside receiver position and all the receivers will now be coached by Malcolm Kelly, who previously just coached outside receivers.
It was common to have an inside and outside receiver coach in an Air Raid scheme, when teams often use four wide receivers at once, but TCU hasn’t used four wide receiver sets often.
“We’ve had inside, outside receivers but it’s been a little silly,” Dykes said. “Because we don’t really have that. That’s more of a traditional air raid. You were in 10 personnel (one running back, zero tight ends) so much where you had two true inside receivers. But really we’re in 11 personnel (one RB, one TE) and 12 personnel (one RB, two TE) so much that we haven’t really had two inside receivers.
“Doug really coached one guy. We’ll move that position into Malcolm’s room and we’ll help Malcolm by hiring an assistant wide receivers coach and we’ll start worrying about that after New Year’s.”
The Horned Frogs face Louisiana in the New Mexico Bowl on Dec. 28.
This story was originally published December 20, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
