Hue Jackson leaves Grambling State after two seasons: Former NFL head coach and school have mutually parted ways.

After two seasons as the head coach of a college football program, the former NFL player is done.

According to Brandon Marcello, Hue Jackson has left Grambling State after two seasons. Jackson’s time with the Tigers ended with an 8-14 (6-10 SWAC) overall record as the team finished 5-6 this season. Both parties came to a decision.

Jackson faced criticism during the previous summer for appointing Art Briles, a former head coach of Baylor, as the offensive coordinator. After being fired by the Bears in May 2016 following a review into his treatment of sexual assault and violence charges at the institution, Briles had not served as a coach. Four days after the hiring was formally announced, he resigned from his position. At Grambling State, he never led a game as a coach.

Following Briles’s departure, Jackson went to Tony Hull, the running backs coach at Louisiana-Monroe, at OC. Under Hull, the Tigers’ offense saw a little improvement, averaging 28.7 points per game this season. In the end, though, it proved insufficient to lead Grambling State to six victories for the first time since 2019.

Jackson worked as Tennessee State’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2021 before coming to Grambling State. He started his coaching career in 1987 as a graduate assistant at his alma mater, the University of the Pacific. He has over thirty years of experience coaching at both the collegiate and professional levels.

In 1997, he was hired as offensive coordinator at USC, where he assisted in the recruitment and development of Carson Palmer (2002) and Matt Leinart (2004), two quarterbacks who won the Heisman Trophy.


In 2004, Jackson departed for the NFL, where he coached wide receivers for the Cincinnati Bengals for three years. Chad Johnson (1,369 yards) and TJ Houshmandzadeh (1,081) were the first two Bengals wide receivers to surpass 1,000 yards in a single season in 2006.

After leaving Cincinnati in 2006, Jackson briefly played for the Baltimore Ravens and Atlanta Falcons before joining the Oakland Raiders as an offensive coordinator in 2010. Following his leadership of the Raiders to a top-five scoring finish (25.6 ppg), Jackson was chosen head coach by the team for the 2011 campaign. In his first season on the job, he guided the Raiders to an 8-8 record, and following the season, he was fired.

In 2012, Jackson began his second tenure as a special teams coach with the Bengals. In 2014, he was elevated to offensive coordinator, a role he retained until 2016 when he was appointed head coach of the Cleveland Browns. He was the first coach to begin a season with a record of 0–14 since 2008. The Browns had a 1–15 record at the end of his first season in charge, and they lost every game the next year becoming just the second team in NFL history to finish with a 0-16 record. Cleveland fired him after a 2–5–1 start to the 2018 season. He never won a road game as head coach (0-20).

He was dismissed of his responsibilities after just one season when he returned to Cincinnati in 2018 as the head coach’s special assistant.