The NFL bent to the Arizona State football on-field coaching staff has continued.
Monday, ASU announced that Robert Rodriguez has been hired by Herm Edwards. Specifically, Rodriguez will serve as defensive line coach for the Aztecs.
Rodriguez will replace Jamar Cain, who left late last month to take a job at Oklahoma.
The past five seasons, Rodriguez worked for the Minnesota Vikings. In 2019, he was the NFL club’s assistant defensive line coach.
“Robert Rodriguez has established himself as a strong up-and-coming coach at the highest level of football and has worked within one of the most dominant defensive organizations of the past several seasons in the Vikings,” the Arizona State football head coach said in a statement. “But he also has numerous years of collegiate coaching experience and I feel strongly that the combination of his professional and collegiate coaching abilities will prove to be a vital asset along our defensive front.”
From 2008-14, Rodriguez was the linebackers coach at UTEP. He was also the Miners’ special teams coordinator. That has been his only on-field job at the FBS level until the move to Arizona State football.
Rodriguez played his college football at UTEP during the early aughts.
“My family, my wife and I are ecstatic for the opportunity to go to Arizona State to work with best staff we could ask for,” Rodriguez said. “Getting the opportunity work with Herm Edwards, Marvin Lewis, Antonio Pierce and that caliber of coaches is one of the reasons that we even looked outside the National Football League. We are all in. Once we got there and saw what they’re trying to build, we knew that this was the place that we wanted to be.”