In his introductory press conference as Nebraska’s interim head coach Tuesday, Mickey Joseph announced that Mike Cassano will step into a full-time assistant role.
Cassano, who has been an offensive analyst for the Huskers since 2019, will coach the wide receivers. That was Joseph’s role this season before he took the interim head coach job.
When Nebraska let four offensive assistants go near the end of the 2021 season, Cassano filled in as the receivers coach for the final two games. There wasn’t any major shift in production during that limited time, as leading wide receiver Samori Touré had 113 yards and a touchdown against Wisconsin and 67 yards against Iowa.
Cassano has bounced around the collegiate coaching ranks for most of the past 25 years, getting his start at UMass in 1998. For six seasons he served as the Minutemen’s running backs coach under head coach Mark Whipple. He then spent a few years at Miami as an offensive assistant and graduate assistant, became a running backs coach again for Florida International and then returned to the Hurricanes to coach the position in 2010.
His only time as a wide receivers coach came in 2015 in a second stint at UMass, where he was the passing game coordinator as well. The Minutemen ranked 11th in the nation in passing that year.
Since then, Cassano has spent the last seven seasons working on Scott Frost’s staffs. Having also served in several recruiting-related roles throughout his coaching career, he was the director of high school relations and an offensive quality control administrator at UCF in 2016 and 2017. He was in charge of national high school relations for Nebraska in 2018.
The only other change among the coaching staff is a small reshuffle on the defensive side. Defensive coordinator Erik Chinander will now also focus on coaching the team’s safeties, while defensive backs coach Travis Fisher will focus solely on cornerbacks and nickels.
“If you look around the country, everybody in the country has two DB coaches because it’s two different positions, safeties and corners,” Joseph said. “Look at the NFL, they got two DB coaches. We were the only one in the country I think that had one DB coach. Fish (Fisher) has two eyes, you got four guys back there, Can’t see all of that.”
No other coaching staff changes have been made at this time, meaning this is the staff the Huskers will carry into the Oklahoma game this Saturday.
