After working as a Penn State assistant coach for 17 years, Jay Paterno is leaving the Nittany Lions’ coaching staff.
According to the Associated Press, Paterno said he met with new head football coach Bill O’Brien and the two “reached a conclusion” that Paterno would not join O’Brien’s staff.
Paterno spent the last 12 seasons as quarterbacks coach for his father, Joe Paterno.
“I wish the program the best of luck in carrying on the academic and athletic excellence that have been a hallmark of this university for decades,” Jay Paterno said in a statement.
The Associated Press report said Paterno will take some time to figure out what he’ll do next. Though he’s done coaching at Penn State, he showed no hard feelings toward the program or university.
“As for Penn Staters, I cannot even begin to express what your support has meant to me and my family over the past seventeen seasons and in particular the past two months,” he said in the statement. “Through the tumult of the past several weeks, it has been your stalwart support combined with life lessons learned from Joe Paterno that has and continue to sustain us.”
After his time as a reserve quarterback with the Lions from 1986-90, Paterno began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Virginia from 1990-92.
He went on to coach tight ends and wide receivers at UConn (1993), quarterbacks at James Madison (1994) and acted as the tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator at Penn State (1995-98) before he landed his current spot as quarterbacks coach with the Lions in 1999.
One of Paterno’s former players, Zack Mills, said his coach was a hands-on kind of coach. He cared about his players on and off the field.
Under Paterno’s tutelage, Mills threw for 7,212 yards and 41 touchdowns during his four years with the Lions from 2001-04. He holds the Penn State record for career passing yards, passing yards in a game (399 yards), career completions (606) and career passing attempts (1,082) and is tied with Kerry Collins with 16 200-yard passing games.
“[Paterno] was always a guy that was looking to get better as a coach. He never settled,” Mills said in a telephone interview. “He would travel in the spring to go to different places. I think he went to Texas one year and just picked up different ideas and stuff. He was always looking to see what he could do better and what he could do to help us get better.”
The relationship between a quarterback and his position coach is a special one, Mills said. There’s a lot of one-on-one time watching film, studying the opponent and knowing what the defense will be coming with on game day, Mills said. And Paterno fit that role.
Paterno wasn’t like his father, Mills said. They were exact opposites in some ways. While Joe was in charge of 125 or so players, Jay controlled only five or six, so he could be more personal with his players.
The elder Paterno would make sure a player could handle the pressure of practice before he threw him in front of the 110,000 fans of Beaver Stadium. Jay liked to throw his players into a situation and see what they could do.
“[Jay] would kind of coach you up from the start where Joe wanted to test you and see where you were and see how you’re going to react,” Mills said. “Jay’s just going to immediately bring you in and start coaching you.”
Whether he decides to take some time off or find a job in coaching right away, Mills said he absolutely believes Paterno will find a spot with another team if he wants to. He has coached away from Penn State before.
“If that’s what he wants to do, I don’t think he’ll have a problem at all,” Mills said.