Syracuse football hires Kirk Martin as QB coach, per report

With just over a week until National Signing Day, the Syracuse Orange football program has potentially filled out its coaching staff for 2018.

According to CuseNation.com, Manvel (Tex.) High School head coach Kirk Martin will join the Orange staff as a quarterbacks coach. Martin has led Manvel (located south of Houston) for 10 straight years now. The team went 14-1 in 2017, with their lone loss in the state championship. He was 108-25 during his time at Manvel.

While it’s potentially apropos of nothing, Martin is also the father of Dino Babers’s son-in-law Koda (who plays football at Texas A&M). So while hiring a high school coach who’s also the father of your son-in-law screams nepotism on some fronts, this is also college football. Nepotism is sort of the way of the game.

And removing nepotism from the conversation, Martin has been very successful at Manvel and has experience coaching in Texas — where spread and Air Raid-style offenses are prevalent — is probably an advantageous move for Syracuse from a QB development standpoint. As you may recall, Orange early enrollee Chance Amie is a product of Tyler, Tex. Inbound linebacker Tre Allison is as well.

Though admittedly, we were hoping to swing for the fences a bit on the QB coach hire after Sean Lewis’s departure, this is far from a miss by any means. Martin’s had success in an area where we’d benefit from recruiting more. He’s also coached up numerous future P5 players. Several players from this year’s team are headed to Texas A&M, and others are going to Missouri and Penn State. His other son, Kason, will play for North Texas after throwing for over 3,000 yards and 39 touchdowns as a senior.

And while the gut reaction is to think that we skimped on this hire and Mike Cavanaugh, Hoya Suxa points out that Martin made over six figures at Manvel. So perhaps we have more money to play with than we realize?

But what do we think? Figure there’s going to be a mix of reactions here, and both are understandable. High school hires (especially from Texas) are becoming more common at the FBS level, and for us, bringing in someone from Texas is key to getting more players that fit this system immediately. The nepotism note is a factor, sure. But if you take that out, Martin still has the chops to get a DI nod. He’ll get put to the test immediately, too, coaching up talents like Eric Dungey and Tommy DeVito at Syracuse.