By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
NEW ORLEANS – By day, he is Ole Miss’ outgoing offensive coordinator and play caller.
By night, he is LSU’s incoming offensive coordinator and play caller.
He is receiving pay checks from both schools – big pay checks, by the way. His last salary at Ole Miss in 2025 is $1.75 million, and LSU is paying him $2.5 million a year through 2028.
On Thursday night, Ole Miss offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. and the No. 6 Rebels (12-1) under new head coach Pete Golding will meet No. 3 Georgia (12-1) in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff in the Sugar Bowl (7 p.m., ESPN) in the Superdome.
After the game when he gets a chance, LSU offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. will check in with his other boss – new LSU head coach Lane Kiffin – to help him and his staff prepare for the opening of the NCAA Transfer Portal window on Friday and high school recruiting. The portal window runs through Jan. 16 with the next recruiting signing day on Feb. 4.
“Yeah, it’s definitely unique,” Weis said with a laugh Tuesday morning during Sugar Bowl Media Day at the Sheraton hotel on Canal Street. “It’s certainly weird.”
Recordings of Weis’ interview will air on Tiger Rag Radio Tuesday between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. on stations statewide.
Weis, 32, is joined by five other LSU assistant coaches that Kiffin hired from his Ole Miss staff who are also coaching the Rebels through the playoffs. Those are running backs coach Kevin Smith, co-offensive coordinator/tight ends coach Joe Cox, pass game coordinator/receivers coach George McDonald, inside receivers coach Sawyer Jordan and quarterbacks assistant Dane Stevens.
“We talk about it when we’re here at Ole Miss,” said Weis, who has been at Ole Miss since 2022. “When we’re in our staff meeting, we’re one big crazy family working together for the players.”
Other offensive coaches Weis has worked with at Ole Miss this season are quarterbacks coach Joe Judge and offensive line coach John Garrison, but those two are not joining Kiffin at LSU.
“I think when you’re around really good people, no matter what job you’re going to, you can find a way to make it work,” Weis said. “So, between the coaching staff here, both the guys who are leaving to go to LSU, and the guys who are staying at Ole Miss, and our players here, everyone’s handled it extremely professional and made it really good.”
But it has never happened before quite like this in college football history with so many assistants on a staff taking new jobs at the same new school, yet continuing to work at the old one until that season is over.
“I think we’re just in a unique time in college football, both players and coaches, based on the calendar,” said Golding, who replaced Kiffin at Ole Miss. “But I think from day one, when that opportunity was created, it was no different than every opportunity created for these players once January 2 hits. I think coaches are no different. When you have success and you do a really good job like coach Kiffin had done here, and the assistants had done here, you’re going to have opportunities. The timeline was unfortunate, but it’s not their fault. But from the assistant standpoint, I was never concerned, because there was never a doubt from them about them wanting to coach and finish the job.”
Weis said things have gone somewhat seamlessly.
“I don’t think it’s been a distraction necessarily,” he said. “I think I’ve been able to fully pore in and make sure we’ve got the right game plan and we’ve got the right things to do offensively and still meet with the players on the same sort of schedule.”
Later, under the cover of darkness, though, he becomes LSU’s offensive coordinator.
“And then at night time, just got to be able to flip the job,” he said, laughing again. “And do some recruiting stuff on the other side with LSU. So, it’s been strange, but no, I don’t feel like it’s been a distraction at all.”
The Ole Miss players have not been distracted either. They did beat Tulane, 41-10, on Dec. 20 in the College Football Playoff opener, which was their first game without Kiffin, who built the Ole Miss program from 2020 through the regular season finale of 2025.
“Our players, they’re a very mature group,” Weis said. “Throughout the course of the year, one thing we’ve always talked about, especially with our offensive group, is nothing really fazes them. It really hasn’t bothered them. They’ve been, ‘All right, here we go. What’s the game plan? What we got? Let’s go practice. Let’s go play the game.’ So, I credit them a lot.”
Weis has also been careful to not let one multi-task bleed into another. In other words, he is not trying to recruit Ole Miss players to LSU now, which would be against NCAA rules. And Weis wouldn’t do that anyway to Golding or to Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter, who was behind bringing the new LSU coaches from Ole Miss back to Ole Miss from LSU for the playoffs – with LSU’s permission.
“Coach Golding and Keith and I, we all have really good relationships with one another,” Weis said. “So they knew I was going to handle things the right way. I’ve made sure to go out of my way to not do anything that makes them feel uncomfortable. There were no guardrails put in, but I’ve made sure to do things respectfully in the right way, because I owe it to them. Because they’re allowing me to finish this playoff run, so they deserve the best from me as a coach and for me to handle things professionally with the players and the coaches on staff.”
Kiffin hired Weis to Ole Miss from the offensive coordinator position at South Florida, where Weis was in 2020 and ’21. He was also Kiffin’s offensive coordinator in 2018 and ’19 at Florida Atlantic and was an offensive analyst under Kiffin in 2015 and ’16 when Kiffin was Alabama’s offensive coordinator.
“He’s the best offensive mind I’ve been around,” said Weis, whose father Charlie Weis was a three-time Super Bowl winning offensive coordinator with the New England Patriots and a former head coach of Notre Dame.
Staying with Kiffin was the main reason Weis left Ole Miss … or will leave Ole Miss eventually when the Rebels are eliminated from the playoffs.
“It’s been extremely emotional,” he said. “It’s been very difficult. It was a really hard decision, but at the end of the day, I owe a lot to coach Kiffin and the things he’s given me in my career and brought me along and gave me opportunities to come here to Ole Miss and to Alabama. We just have a really good relationship, and I think we work really well with each other. We have a system that kind of works. I was excited to continue to do that at LSU. And obviously I’ve had a great time here at Ole Miss.”
The Kiffin-Weis system is all about the quarterback.
“One of the cool things about coach Kiffin throughout his career is we’ve always molded the system to the quarterback, and not the other way around,” Weis said.
That quarterback this season has been senior Trinidad Chambliss, who is No. 15 in the nation in efficiency at 158.8 on 241-of-362 passing for 3,298 yards and 19 touchdowns with only three interceptions. Chambliss has also rushed 506 yards on 124 carries with eight touchdowns.
And should Chambliss receive an NCAA waiver for another senior season, which is expected by Jan. 16, he is expected to strongly consider transferring to LSU to be with Kiffin and Weis. Also trending is Ole Miss sophomore running back Kewan Lacy transferring to LSU to be with new LSU running backs coach Kevin Smith, who is still coaching Ole Miss as well. Lacy is eighth in the nation in rushing with 1,366 yards on 273 carries and is second in the nation in touchdowns with 21.
But, for now, Weis is not recruiting those two to LSU, even if they try to recruit themselves to him.
“No, I’ve made sure that none of that happens, because honestly all I care about right now when I’m in the (Ole Miss) building is making sure I give these players the best opportunity to go beat Georgia,” Weis said. “That is the most important thing on my mind when I’m there.”
But when the sun goes down …
“And when I go home at night and I make recruiting calls for LSU, the most important thing to me is making sure that we’re ready to go,” Weis said. “So, when it is time in January for us to go recruiting, we’ll be in a good position to go succeed at LSU.”
Be the first to comment