SU reportedly targeting New York Giants running backs coach Jeff Nixon for offensive coordinator

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Syracuse is reportedly zoning in on New York Giants running back coach Jeff Nixon to be the program’s next offensive coordinator, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel. The report comes one day after SU reportedly added former Texas A&M defensive line coach Elijah Robinson as its new defensive coordinator. 

Nixon, a 49-year-old Rochester, PA, native, is currently in his first season as the Giants running back coach. His 26-year coaching career includes 14 seasons in the National Football League. He would be replacing Jason Beck as Syracuse’s offensive coordinator. 

Prior to 2023, Nixon spent 2020-22 with the Carolina Panthers and held a variety of roles — senior offensive assistant, running backs coach, assistant head coach and interim offensive coordinator during the 2021 season after Carolina fired former coordinator Joe Brady in-season. He followed then-Panthers head coach Matt Rhule to Carolina in 2020 after working with Rhule for the previous three seasons at Baylor. There, Nixon served as a co-offensive coordinator and running backs coach. 

His career as an NFL coach began in 2007, when he took a job with the Philadelphia Eagles as an offensive and special teams coach. Nixon stayed there through the 2010 season, and then was hired by the Miami Dolphins as a running backs coach, a job he held from 2011-15. He spent 2016 in San Francisco as the 49ers’ tight ends coach before venturing to Baylor with Rhule. 

Nixon played Division I football at West Virginia from 1993-94, until he transferred to Penn State for his final two years of eligibility. He got his start as a coach in 1997 as a student assistant with the Nittany Lions before becoming Princeton’s running backs coach the following year.