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Ted Roof Named Defensive Coordinator At Duke
Jan. 10, 2002
Duke head football coach Carl Franks announced Thursday that Ted Roof, a former All-ACC linebacker at Georgia Tech and the defensive coordinator at his alma mater the past three seasons, has been named the defensive coordinator for the Blue Devils.
Roof, who served as an assistant coach at Duke from 1990-93, replaces Bob Trott who was dismissed from the Blue Devil staff last month.
"We are very pleased to have Ted join our football staff," Franks said. "He has tremendous experience as a defensive coordinator in the Atlantic Coast Conference and is an excellent recruiter. He will bring great enthusiasm to the program and I believe our players will be very excited about playing for him."
At Georgia Tech, Roof coached the linebackers in 1998 before being elevated to defensive coordinator prior to the 1999 season. In 1998, the Yellow Jackets went 10-2, shared the ACC title with Florida State and upended Notre Dame in the Gator Bowl. The 1999 Tech team went 8-4 and finished the year ranked 21st in the Associated Press poll. In 2000, the Yellow Jacket defense ranked 12th in the nation in rushing defense and 20th in scoring defense, allowing just 19.0 points per game, as Georgia Tech posted a 9-3 record and was ranked 17th in the final national poll.
This past season, the Tech defensive unit ranked third in the ACC in total defense (333.3 ypg) and second in rushing defense (117.1 ypg) - marks that ranked 32nd and 23rd nationally. In Georgia Tech's 24-14 win over 11th-ranked Stanford in the Seattle Bowl, the Yellow Jackets held the Cardinal offense to season lows of 350 total yards and 14 points. During Roof's coaching stint at Georgia Tech, the Yellow Jackets posted a four-year record of 35-14, tied for the 1998 ACC Championship and played in four bowl games (Gator - 1998 & 1999, Peach - 2000, Seattle - 2001).
Roof began his coaching career as a graduate assistant coach at Alabama from 1987-88 before serving as the linebackers coach at West Georgia in 1989. He then spent four seasons as the outside linebackers coach at Duke under Barry Wilson. Following his stint in Durham, Roof was on the staff at Massachusetts for three seasons and then served one season as defensive coordinator at Western Carolina before moving on to Georgia Tech.
A native of Lawrenceville, Ga., and a graduate of Central Gwinnett High School, Roof lettered four times for the Jackets during the 1982-85 seasons. He started his final three seasons and was a leader of the Rambling Wreck's famed "Black Watch" defense as a senior, when he served as team captain while Georgia Tech went 9-2-1 and defeated Michigan State in the All-American Bowl. A first team All-ACC selection in 1985, Roof ranks seventh on the Jackets' all-time tackling list with 417 hits and is sixth in career tackles for loss with 25.
Roof, 38, who was enshrined into the Georgia Tech Athletics Hall of Fame in 1998, earned a bachelor's degree in Management in 1987. Roof is married to the former Pam Ash of Fayetteville, Ga., and the couple has three-year-old twin boys, Terrence Davis and Michael Edwin.
Carl Franks on the hiring of Ted Roof:
"I'm excited about having Ted (Roof) come. I think he's certainly going to give us a guy who's experienced in the ACC who will know all the teams we play. I think he'll bring us some excitement. Our defense will change a little bit-we'll probably be a little more multiple defense than we have been in the past. I think our team will enjoy playing for Ted. He's got a great track record as a recruiter, so I certainly think that will help us too."
On how important it was to hire a coach who knew the other ACC team's offense: "I think knowing the offense is something that's certainly a good byproduct of being able to persuade him to come here. It won't be a year of trying to learn what everybody's doing, so he'll certainly bring in a lot of expertise concerning the other offenses that we'll face. I think you'll see him do a few different things than you saw him do at Georgia Tech."
On what the difference will be in the defense: "I hope you see our guys get excited, enjoy playing, maybe a little bit more of an aggressive style defense. I think you'll see some different schemes than what we've done on defense."
On what Franks said to Roof to convince him to come to Duke: "I don't know if it was any one main thing. I just thought that it gave him the chance to be the coordinator here. I don't know if he was going to have that same opportunity at Georgia Tech. He still gets a chance to call the shots and gets a chance to make a big difference. If our team can play better defense, he's certainly going to be recognized as a really outstanding defensive coach. He'll have the chance to run the defense that he would like to run. Not everything that they did at Georgia Tech was everything he wanted to do. I think there are some more things he'd like to do defensively than what they have done, so he'll get a chance to have a little more free say in what we're going to do on defense."
