Meet the Coaches: Indiana QB Coach Tino Sunseri ‘A Real Rising Star’

Indiana quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri got his start at some of the best programs in the nation, including Alabama, Tennessee and Florida State. That prepared him for a successful run at James Madison, and he’s looking to continue that with head coach Curt Cignetti at Indiana.

Tino Sunseri coaches the Indiana quarterbacks at Memorial Stadium. / Indiana Athletics

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – James Madison quarterback Cole Johnson had a stellar sixth-year senior season in 2021.

He set James Madison’s single-season records for passing yards (3,779), touchdowns (41) and completions (287). He ranked fifth in FCS passing yards and threw fewer interceptions, four, than each quarterback ahead of him.

But Monday film sessions remained humbling because quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri, who followed head coach Curt Cignetti to Indiana as co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the Hoosiers,  demanded perfection. 

“You’d have five or six touchdowns and three incompletions, you’d come off feeling good about yourself, we did a great job,” Johnson said in an interview with HoosiersNow. “Then you go into film, and Tino is the ultimate critic where he’d say, ‘I told you you had a three-step [drop] and a hitch there, and you took a three-step and two hitches,’ even though you threw a touchdown.”

Johnson was used to coaches being hard on him after games throughout his football career, and he never felt Sunseri was being mean. He took this constructive criticism as a sign Sunseri wanted to help him improve. And because Sunseri had been in that position himself as a quarterback at Pittsburgh from 2008-12, they could better connect on a personal level.

“Tino has a unique ability to not be degrading and putting you down through criticism and constructiveness,” Johnson said. “He’s very positive and uplifting, and it’s a great way to help you grow. He wants the best for you, and you understand that.”

As a sixth-year senior, Johnson went on to rank top five among FCS quarterbacks in passing yards, touchdowns, completion percentage and pass efficiency as James Madison went 12-2 and reached the FCS playoff semifinals. He was named CFPA FCS National Performer of the Year, second-team All-American and CAA Offensive Player of the Year, among a slew of other awards.

James Madison quarterback Cole Johnson looks to pass against Delaware. / William Bretzger / USA TODAY NETWORK

Following Johnson’s graduation, Sunseri had similar success developing two more quarterbacks in as many seasons. As James Madison made the jump from FCS to FBS, quarterback Todd Centeio was named Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year and helped the Dukes win the Sun Belt East division. In 2023, quarterback Jordan McCloud was named Sun Belt Player of the Year as James Madison went 11-1. 

In that three-year run, Johnson, Centeio and McCloud combined to throw for 101 touchdowns and just 19 interceptions with Sunseri as the quarterbacks coach. Johnson considers himself more of a pocket passer, compared to Centeio and McCloud, who could make higher-level plays with their legs. 

The ability to adapt offensive schemes to fit each quarterback’s strengths is what Johnson believes allowed Sunseri, along with head coach Curt Cignetti and offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan, to have success three straight years with three different quarterbacks. 

That’s a rare feat in college football, and it’s one reason Sunseri’s future is bright as he tries to duplicate his success at Indiana.

“Sunseri is a real rising star in the business,” Shane Mettlen, who covers James Madison for the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va., said in an interview with HoosiersNow.

“He’s a guy that’s going to be a head coach. You might see comparisons to [USC head coach] Lincoln Riley as far as his career trajectory, being a young guy who gets in there as a quarterbacks coach and is really sharp and a really good recruiter, really good on-field coach … You’ll see the huge energy, and he’s the guy the players gravitate towards during a practice when he’s out there, so he’s been really good and really good at developing quarterbacks.”

The Sniper Mentality

🏆🏆🏆 pic.twitter.com/gUVp4Y9yxh

— Tino Sunseri (@CoachTSunseri) November 30, 2023

Sunseri, 35, comes from a football family. His father, Sal, has nearly 40 years of coaching experience, with stops at Alabama, LSU and 10 years in the NFL. His brother, Vinnie, just became the safeties coach at the University of Washington after four years on Bill Belichick’s staff with the New England Patriots. 

Following his playing career at Pittsburgh and in the Canadian Football League with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Tino immediately jumped into high-level college football coaching. His first job in 2016-17 was as a quality control assistant on Jimbo Fisher’s staff at Florida State, and he held the same title at Tennessee in 2018 under former head coach Jeremy Pruitt. 

Sunseri said he received a phone call from Alabama coach Nick Saban following the 2018 season, who asked him to join his staff as an offensive graduate assistant. In this role, he’d be the right-hand man for Steve Sarkisian, Alabama’s offensive coordinator at the time and now the head coach at Texas.

When he first arrived in Tuscaloosa, Sunseri recalled a meeting with Saban, who said this role would be best for him because it would allow him to be in the box with the offensive staff during games, be on the field during practice, take part in on-campus recruiting visits and run scout teams at practice. The only limitation would be that he couldn’t go out on the road and recruit. 

It was a major change from his role as an analyst at Florida State and Tennessee. As a graduate assistant, Sunseri had to take classes and only made about $1,400 per month, a significant drop from his $85,000 salary at Tennessee as an analyst.

“At first I was kind of just shocked,” Sunseri said in an interview with Rhett Lewis, Indiana football’s radio analyst. “I kind of just sat there and said, ‘Yes sir,’ and I didn’t realize how much it was going to help me.”

Sunseri held this role at Alabama in 2019 and in 2020, the last time the Crimson Tide won the national championship. He was around future NFL quarterbacks like Tua Tagovailoa, Mac Jones and Bryce Young every day.

In the box during games, he relayed defensive coverages and quarterback notes to Sarkisian, hearing and talking through the coaching process of every game. He watched Saban and the defensive staff adjust to every offense they faced. He sat in meeting rooms and learned to focus on the process of attacking every day, rather than being results-oriented. 

“Something which I appreciate more than you could possibly imagine is just [Saban’s] direction and leadership and also how he cultivates you as a young coach,” Sunseri said. “I really can never thank him enough for the opportunity that he gave me, the lessons that he gave me, and really just the standard of being able to operate and hold yourself to that high standard.”

When Cignetti hired Sunseri as James Madison’s quarterbacks coach for the 2021 season, Johnson believes Sunseri brought a winning mindset with him from Alabama, along with some offensive schemes and an understanding of how top programs should operate. 

That season, James Madison led the CAA with 38.3 points scored per game, more than eight points higher than any conference opponent. Johnson said they played an aggressive style of offense, and they worked hard to avoid tendencies that defenses could recognize and exploit.

Johnson described Sunseri’s coaching style as “intense, in a good way,” and that he’s in love with the process rather than results. He said Sunseri and Shanahan broke down offenses and defense in a way that made him feel confident going into any game. Through hours of film study and on-field practice, he knew exactly what opposing defenses were going to do, and he had an answer for anything they threw at him. That allowed him to play free, not worry, and simply react. 

“I really felt like I was the best-prepared quarterback in the county my senior year,” Johnson said. “Because of the work we put in and just the preparation each week and our game planning, I knew I was going to go out there and see what I saw on film and what he prepared me to see.”

Johnson recalled James Madison’s FCS second round playoff game in 2021 against Southeastern Louisiana. Leading up to the game, Johnson remembers hearing about how he’d have to outscore the nation’s highest-scoring offense at 44.9 points per game. After taking a 14-10 lead in the first quarter, Johnson said Sunseri had a simple message for the offense.

“We came to the sideline and Tino basically said, ‘We’re faster than these guys, we’re more athletic,’” Johnson said. “And he let us be super aggressive throughout the game.”

Johnson threw touchdown passes of 57 and 21 yards in the second quarter, then rushed for a 35-yard score. He added a 31-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter, and finished with 321 passing yards, six total touchdowns and no interceptions as James Madison won 59-20.

Johnson graduated second in program history in both passing yards and touchdowns. But even beyond coaching, he said few people in his life have had a bigger impact on him in six months than Sunseri. Johnson considered him to be a mentor he could talk to about things outside of football and learn life lessons from. 

“I think [Sunseri] cares about you way more than just transactional as a player and what you can do for him,” Johnson said. “And that was really meaningful and shows that he cares about me. I think he really is somebody that if I would have been able to buy stock low when I had him as a coach, I knew he was going to do great things and I think we’re just starting to see it and hopefully the rest of the world will continue to see it as he has more success.”

Sunseri will now try to translate that success at James Madison and all the things he learned at Alabama, Florida State and Tennessee to his new job at Indiana under Cignetti. He’ll have to do it with a new quarterback room – with Kurtis Rourke, Tayven Jackson and others. But the past few seasons demonstrated that Shanahan and Sunseri can adapt and succeed with new quarterbacks each year.

“I really think the combination of those two, but specifically Tino, is the best kept secret in college football right now,” Johnson said. “I got to experience his first season as an assistant coach, and Tino I think is the best coach, bar none, assistant coach at any level right now."

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