Georgia Tech Head Coaching Candidate Profile: Sean Lewis

Could Kent State head coach Sean Lewis be a fit at Georgia Tech?

Jackson Caudell | Oct 27, 2022

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With the hire of J Batt as the athletic director, Georgia Tech can now entirely focus on bringing in the next head football coach for the program and start fundraising. There have not been many rumors leaking out of this search yet, but there could be a number of candidates for the job.

After writing profiles for Deion Sanders, Jamey Chadwell, Bill O'Brien, Dan Mullen, Dell McGee, Matt Rhule, Todd Monken, Willie Fritz, and Jeff Monken it is time for a new installation in this series.

Kent State has long been one of the most challenging jobs in the MAC and the country. In the program's entire history, the Golden Flashes have only been to four bowl games, have never finished the season ranked, and are usually at the bottom of the standings in the conference.

Kent State head coach Sean Lewis — Sean Lewis has led a remarkable turnaround as the head coach at Kent State / Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

However, two of the four bowl games in Kent State history have come under current head coach Sean Lewis and the first bowl win in school history also happened with Lewis as the head coach. When he was hired as the head coach of the Golden Flashes, Lewis was the youngest head coach in the FBS. He has helped build the Kent State program into one of the best in their conference and the offenses under his direction have been very good and can score on most teams. He has started to get some buzz as a coaching candidate at power five jobs and Bruce Feldman, the college football insider for the Athletic, listed Lewis as a candidate for the job at Georgia Tech.

So let's take a closer look at Lewis and discuss if he would be a fit at Georgia Tech.

Lewis played quarterback and tight end at Wisconsin from 2006-2007 before getting into his coaching career. From 2007-2009, Lewis was the offensive coordinator at Harold L. Richards High School in Illinois before becoming the tight ends coach in 2010 at Nebraska-Omaha, a Division II program.

Lewis moved on to become a grad assistant at Akron in 2011 and then the wide receivers and tight ends coach at Eastern Illinois from 2012-2013 under current Syracuse head coach Dino Babers. Lewis would then be following Babers to different stops before finally arriving as the head coach at Kent State. Babers became the head coach at Bowling Green in 2014 and Lewis was the wide receivers coach there in 2014 before becoming the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2015.

After Babers took the head coaching job at Syracuse, Lewis was brought on to be the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach from 2016-2017. Lewis would then get his first head coaching opportunity when Kent State offered him the job.

Lewis took over the program in 2018 and Kent State had not won more than four games since 2012. The Golden Flashes were in need of a complete restart as a program and Lewis was going to be in charge of the rebuild.

The first season did not go well, with Kent State finishing 2-10 and 1-7 in the MAC. However, Lewis would get the program back sooner than anyone could have thought in his second season in 2019. Kent State finished the regular season 6-6 and was going to play in its first bowl game since 2012. Kent State would get its first bowl win in program history by beating Utah State in the Frisco Bowl and what Kent State accomplished that season is truly incredible. It was one of the biggest turnarounds in recent college football history and everyone was waiting to see what the young head coach and the Golden Flashes had in store next.

However, the COVID-19 Pandemic struck and the 2020 season was shortened to just four games for Kent State. The Golden Flashes would finish that year 3-1, but it was too short of a year to make any true determinations about where this program was heading.

In 2021, Kent State would finish the regular season 7-5 and would win the East division in the MAC for the first time since 2012. The season did not end the way they wanted to, however, losing to Northern Illinois in the conference championship game and then to Wyoming in the bowl game. It was still a great accomplishment to get Kent State back to a bowl game for the second time in three years.

In the current season, Lewis has Kent State at 3-5, but it should be noted that three of those losses were a part of the toughest non-conference schedule in the country. Kent State played Washington, Oklahoma, and Georgia and lost all three of those games. If you remember, Lewis had the Golden Flashes competition with Georgia for a large part of that game, and that shocked many.

His current record at Kent State is 22-29 overall and 17-15 in the MAC.

So should Georgia Tech take a look at Lewis and would he leave for the Yellow Jackets' open job?

I like Lewis and think he will be a good coach at the right spot. He runs a very good offensive system that is somewhat similar to what Josh Heupel has at Tennessee and has shown he can find and develop players that fit his scheme. If he was hired as the head coach, he would bring an exciting offense with him and I think Georgia Tech could put up a lot of points and would be entertaining to watch at the least. Winning at a place like Kent State should not be brushed aside because of the talent disadvantage he has had to operate within a lot of their games.

He has shown he can find the right fits for his system and develop them. Being able to build a program at a place like Kent State, where resources are few and talent is sparse, and showing an ability to recruit the right players for his program and scheme are things that Georgia Tech needs.

However, Lewis has never coached in the southeast area before and it is unclear if he would have an understanding of what it would take to win at a place like Georgia Tech. The recruiting would have to be better than anything he had to do at Kent State and there would be higher expectations, something he has also not had to deal with. Kent State is the only program where he has been a head coach and he might be too light on experience for some decision makers or fans.

He is also a young up-and-coming head coach and is going to get an opportunity somewhere in the near future. Maybe Georgia Tech is the place that does that and gets ahead of everyone else. Lewis is an intriguing option for the Yellow Jackets if they want to go down this road. There are far worse options out there.

Overall, I don't think Lewis will get the job, but he is one candidate that Georgia Tech could look back on and wish that they had hired.

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