The 2012 Lobo football team will look completely different than it has in the last three seasons — on the sidelines, that is.
First-year head coach Bob Davie officially introduced his coaching staff on Monday and there are a lot of new faces.
Every member of the coaching staff from the three consecutive 1-11 teams will not return.
“It sucks,” senior quarterback B.R. Holbrook said. “It’s not a good feeling. We’ve been with them for so long that you’ve formed these relationships and (then) you see them go, it’s really hard.”
Former head coach Mike Locksley recruited junior defensive back Emmanuel Fatokun from McKinley Tech High School in Washington, D.C in 2009.
Fatokun said he’s been impressed by what he’s seen from the new staff, including Davie, but building the relationships with the new coaches will take time.
“It’s like a stepfather coming into a stepchild’s relationship,” Fatokun said. “Right now it’s not definite until we go on these years with these new coaches.”
Holbrook and Fatokun are just two of several players who will have to adjust to a new system. They said they won’t forget what they learned from Locksley’s staff.
“They may be gone physically, but mentally and what they taught me, everything is still there,” Fatokun said. “We got the fatherly love; we got that from coach Locks. Now we want to win. We want to be successful.”
Success may be hard to come by, as Holbrook enters his last season as a Lobo and will do so under a new offensive scheme.
“It is going to present some pretty good challenges,” Holbrook said. “But I’m confident and we have a pretty good senior class and I think we’re starting to mature as a team, so I think we’ll able to handle that pretty well.”
One of those challenges will be for Fatokun, who was on defense last year.
Fatokun will switch to the offensive side of the ball this season and play running back for the Lobos.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
He said he brought the idea to Davie after a meeting with the coach.
“He basically asked me, ‘What do you feel like you can do?’ and I just felt like I can play running back,” Fatokun said. “I feel like that’s where I can definitely contribute.”
As for the coaches, Davie said he hired people who can contribute by making the players better on the field, in the classroom and in the real world.
“I think we really do have the potential to be a heck of a staff,” Davie said. “I use the word ‘potential’ because we haven’t done anything yet.”
