Syracuse Football: New Orange Outside WRs Coach Chris Beatty Leaves for Maryland

Back when Chris Beatty joined the Syracuse Orange football staff, we were pretty excited. When he flipped Virginia linebacker commit Kenneth Ruff to SU just a day later, we were even MORE excited.

Last night's news, however, will not have you excited.

First reported by Sports Illustrated's Thayer Evans, the Orange outside wide receivers coach (don't think we knew his title yet) is headed off to the Maryland Terrapins, where he'll serve as wide receivers coach.

As you'll recall, former Syracuse head coach Scott Shafer is the new defensive coordinator down in Maryland. In addition, Beatty's former boss with the Hoos, Mike London, is the Terps' new associate head coach/defensive line coach. Both London and Beatty have recruited the hell out of the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia corridor over the course of their careers. As mentioned in Evans's article, Beatty being back closer to home, his wife and his young son were all big factors in the move.

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Obviously this is a bit of a blow to the positive momentum and vibes that were surrounding the Orange football program of late. Instead of two spots left on the full-time staff, there are three to fill, now including running backs coach (which we'd assumed would be Beatty's role). While you might (like I did) immediately think that Ruff is gone, Rivals' Scott Brown says he's still solid on Syracuse at the moment.

The other angle here is that Beatty was the only non-Dino Babers coaching tree hire on the staff, which (again) we saw as a big win. Now without him, there are bound to be a lot of questions around who else Syracuse can hire with so little time left in the recruiting cycle (a month). The three spots up for grabs are at least slightly disconcerting. The fact that Maryland could lure Beatty away after a few weeks could also shed some light on what SU's budgets might look like for assistants. Things have never been great there, and it was probably a reason why Shafer was largely limited to hiring his friends. If that's still the case for the Orange (and we don't know that for sure, mind you), it could add an extra challenge for Babers as SU's head man.

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We've got a little more time before the recruiting quiet period ends, and then the 2016 class should quickly take shape before National Signing Day. If we're lucky, all of Syracuse's coaches could be in place by then. If not -- and not to jump off a ledge -- it'll be interesting to see how Babers's first class ends up shaking out.