Boston College football’s 2019 coaching staff has been departing steadily over the last month, one coach after the other. Though a complete overhaul of the coaching staff is a daunting task, it has given Martin Jarmond and newly appointed head coach Jeff Hafley the chance to select some of the most elite coaches in both college and professional football to work with on the sidelines and in the coaches’ box.
One of those newest hires includes offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Frank Cignetti Jr., brought in to replace former OC Mike Bajakian who was hired away to Northwestern in early December.
BC Athletics made the announcement on Monday.
Cignetti will work alongside Hafley, who he has worked with twice before. The pair formerly worked together at Pittsburgh first in the 2009-10 season, with Cignetti Jr. at OC and Hafley his defensive counterpart. That season, the Panthers averaged 32.1 points per game, a solid pace for one of BC’s Atlantic Coast Conference rivals.
Cignetti has spent the early part of his career split between college ball and the professional league. His college coaching career began at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1990, where his father, Frank Cignetti Sr., was the longtime head coach. He then made his first jump to the NFL to coach the Kansas City Chiefs and New Orleans Saints.
Cignetti Jr. was then the offensive coordinator at Fresno State from 2002-2005 before transitioning to North Carolina in 2006. He made his second jump to the NFL the following season, becoming the quarterbacks coach for the San Francisco 49ers in the 2007 season.
Soon after, he went back to college coaching in the form of serving as UC Berkeley’s offensive coordinator for the 2008 season—a year in which the Golden Bears averaged over 33 points per game. The next year, he crossed paths with Hafley for the first time at Pittsburgh. He and Hafley worked together once more at Rutgers in 2011.
After Rutgers, Cignetti moved among a few teams in the NFL for seven years, most recently working under Mike McCarthy for the Green Bay Packers in 2018.
Cignetti’s hiring comes on the same day the Eagles appointed a new defensive coordinator, Tem Lukabu.
Featured Image by Josh Reynolds / AP Photo
