Oklahoma State football to hire OU assistant Kevin Johns as QB coach, per report
Scott WrightThe Oklahoman
STILLWATER — Oklahoma State is crossing Bedlam lines to add to its football coaching staff.
The Cowboys are expected to hire Kevin Johns as its quarterbacks coach, according to a Saturday morning report by Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated.
Johns currently is the interim co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at OU. He was on the staff as an analyst, then was promoted after the Sooners fired offensive coordinator Seth Littrell.
Johns has a long history as an offensive coordinator and will bring a varied background to the staff of new offensive coordinator Doug Meacham.
A quarterback at Dayton from 1994-97, Johns spent the majority of his early coaching career at Northwestern, working his way up from graduate assistant in 1999 to receivers coach and passing game coordinator in 2010.
He was hired by Kevin Wilson as co-offensive coordinator at Indiana in 2011, and in 2014 was promoted to offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
Johns spent the 2017 season in the same roles at Western Michigan, then joined Kliff Kingsbury’s staff at Texas Tech in 2018 as offensive coordinator and receivers coach, running an offense led most of the year by Alan Bowman.
From there, Johns spent three seasons as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Memphis, where former Cowboy receiver and current OSU quality control coach David Glidden was on staff.
In 2022, Johns took the same role at Duke, where he spent two seasons. After head coach Mike Elko was hired at Texas A&M in December of 2023, Johns accepted the analyst position at OU.
Johns is the first assistant coaching hire on the offensive side of the ball in the wake of Meacham taking over as offensive coordinator. OSU formally announced Meacham’s hiring Friday, but no public announcements have been made in regard to assistant coaches being retained, though this suggests Tim Rattay will not remain on staff.
