LSU football coach Les Miles announced Monday night that he was replacing one Southeastern Conference defensive coaching veteran with another.
Miles has hired Alabama inside linebackers coach Kevin Steele as the new defensive coordinator of the Tigers, who finished fifth nationally this past season in scoring defense (allowing 17.5 points per game) and ninth in total defense (yielding 316.8 yards a contest). Steele replaces John Chavis, who left LSU after six seasons to become the defensive coordinator at Texas A&M.
“This is a great hire for us,” Miles said in a released statement. “Kevin has had a very successful coaching career, one that has seen him coach alongside some of the top coaches in the game. He won a national title with Tom Osborne at Nebraska, coached with Bobby Bowden at Florida State and coached in the NFL with one of the great defensive coaches in Dom Capers.”
Coincidentally, Chavis and Steele are Tennessee graduates who grew up in Dillon, S.C.
Steele began his coaching career as a student assistant and a graduate assistant in Knoxville before becoming outside linebackers coach for the Volunteers in 1982. He returned to Tennessee as an assistant in 1987 and ’88 before leaving for Nebraska, and he was Baylor University’s head coach from 1999 to 2002.