The administration at North Carolina A&T made a lot of fans and supporters happy when it handed the keys to its HBCU football program to Shawn Gibbs in December. The long-time North Carolina A&T running backs coach is now the head man in charge, and he’s bringing back a lot of familiar faces from the program’s run as the HBCU standard in the mid-to-late 2010s. One of those names is Tony McRae, a former NC A&T great and NFL player who has spent the past couple of seasons coaching defensive backs at rival North Carolina Central. He was among the first batch of names released, along with defensive coordinator Denzel Jones, who also starred for NC A&T as a player under Rod Broadway. But in a recent interview on the Blue Death Valley Podcast, Gibbs revealed a few new names that will be helping in his quest to get the Aggies back to respectability as his regime gets under way.
Joining NC A&T will be another former NC Central assistant in Courtney Coard. Coard, who served as defensive coordinator at NCCU for the past three seasons, will be coming back to East Greensboro to serve as defensive line coach as well as assistant head coach. And perhaps the biggest bombshell dropped by Gibbs was that Sam Washington — who was fired as head coach by NC A&T back in 2022 — will be on his staff as a consultant. Gibbs said he is confident in his staff, but having the architect of many of the great HBCU defenses of the past is something he thinks will only help.
“But just to add another mind, to it, and maybe we can look at it from an outside perspective and, and let us know — ‘hey, have you thought about this? Or you might want to tweak that… Just having another perspective on it is going to do nothing but make us better because we want to play good defensive around here first and foremost,” Gibbs said…