Report: Virginia Tech To Hire Jaguars’ TE Coach Tyler Bowen As OC

The Jacksonville Jaguars are set to lose a position coach heading into the 2022 offseason.

The Jacksonville Jaguars are reportedly going to be losing a member of their coaching staff to the college ranks. 

According to Matt Zenitz of On3Sports, Jaguars' tight ends coach Tyler Bowen is set to become the offensive coordinator at Virginia Tech, who recently hired former Penn State defensive coordinator Brent Pry as head coach. Zenitz reports Bowen will join Virginia Tech's staff at the end of the Jaguars' season, which has five games left.

Pry and Bowen served on the Penn State staff together in 2014 when Bowen was a Penn State graduate assistant and Pry was an assistant head coach, and also from 2018-2020 when Pry was defensive coordinator and linebacker coach and Bowen was co-offensive coordinator.

Bowen joined head coach Urban Meyer's this past offseason after becoming a rising star in the college ranks. He was Penn State's co-offensive coordinator, offensive recruiting coordinator & tight ends coach in 2020 after serving as tight ends coach from 2018-2019. He called plays for Penn State in the 2019 Cotton Bowl, a game in which they set a school record for points scored in a bowl game. 

This year, he has been Jacksonville's tight ends coach and has overseen a unit that has undergone radical transition at times, most notably the addition of tight end Dan Arnold in the middle of the season. Arnold went on to become one of the most productive players in the entire offense and even made plays in the days after his trade from the Panthers, earning Bowen praise from Meyer.

"Tyler Bowen’s done a really good job with him. That’s amazing to me that all of a sudden, he’s here Tuesday and let’s go play and he did really well in the game in a limited role," Meyer said after the Jaguars' Week 4 game against the Bengals. 

According to TruMedia, Jaguars' tight ends this season have caught 55 passes on 86 targets for 568 yards (10.33 yards per catch) and two touchdowns. Arnold leads the group with 28 catches for 324 yards, but no Jaguars tight end has caught a touchdown since Jacob Hollister in Week 5.