The Baltimore Ravens officially announced on Thursday the hiring of Chris Hewitt as their assistant special teams coach. Hewitt is regarded highly as a good football mind. The Ravens seem to scout coaches as well as they do players. He will be joining a team as a coach expected to help turn things around for an abysmal special teams unit last season.
Hewitt happens to be the same age as Ray Lewis, 37. Which is becoming much more common around the league in recent years. Coaches are getting younger and younger. He joins the Ravens after spending the previous eight seasons as an assistant at Rutgers University. Most recently, he served as the Scarlet Knights’ running backs coach from 2010-11. Prior to that, Hewitt was the team’s cornerbacks coach, director of speed and skill development and graduate assistant.
Hewitt began his coaching career in 2003 when he served one season as Notre Dame’s strength and conditioning assistant. In addition to his work at the collegiate level, Hewitt has also completed four different training camps as part of the NFL’s Minority Coaching Fellowship Program, two with the Ravens (2006 and 2008) and one each with the Philadelphia Eagles and Cleveland Browns. The program is designed to expose talented minority coaches to methods and philosophies of NFL training camps. Which I think is very interesting...
The Ravens like to have coaches with high moral character. The term "core Values" seems to come up a lot in interviews about coaches.
When the Ravens special teams coordinator Jerry Rossburg was asked about the hiring of Hewitt he seemed pleased.
"We believe Chris’ maturity, work ethic and overall skill set will enhance our special teams units," assistant head coach/special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg stated. "He brings experience as a coach in a highly-competitive college program and also as a NFL player. Chris is very familiar with our organization, and his core values align well with those of our coaching staff." -(Brian Brower footballnewsnow.com)
The Ravens also announced the promotion of Matt Weiss to defensive assistant. I'm not sure exactly what a defensive assistant does besides learn and get groomed for the future. The Ravens are bringing in good young football minds and we may be seeing these names move up the ladder in the future.
Weiss, 28, has served as the head coach’s assistant for the past three seasons (2009-11) under Harbaugh. In that role, he supported Harbaugh with administrative duties while also working in a defensive quality control capacity. Some of his primary responsibilities included compiling opponent scouting reports, working closely with scout teams in practice and assisting in the breakdown of opponent tendencies. During games, Weiss assisted with charting opponent offenses, while also serving as a liaison for in-game coach’s challenges. Why can't I get a job like that?
Prior to joining the Ravens, Weiss spent one season (2008) as the defensive and special teams assistant at Stanford. He began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Stanford. So I'm sure this was a Harbaugh to Harbaugh favor at one point.