FootballScoop is proud to announce that Shiel Wood and CJ Ah You (Texas Tech) are the 2025 FootballScoop Linebackers Coaches of the Year presented by Teamworks as selected by prior winners.
With all due respect to our other winners, it would be hard to argue there was a better positional unit in college football in 2025 than Texas Tech's linebackers. The other units should not take that sentence personally, however. Tech's linebackers would be the best unit in nearly any season, because they had Jacob Rodriguez and David Bailey.
Rodriguez, the mustachioed and married marvel, is a triumph of old-school development. He arrived to Texas Tech in 2022 and largely played special teams while transitioning to linebacker after one season as a utility player on offense at Virginia. A projected starter in 2023, Rodriguez's season was lost in the season-opener at Wyoming. He was a full-time starter in 2024, and in 2025 blossomed into one of the best players in college football -- who happened to play linebacker.
The Big 12's second-leading tackler, Rodriguez's 117 stops are on pace to set a single-season school record. He has topped the 10-tackle mark six times in 13 games to date, including a 14 in the landmark win over BYU, plus another 14 in a blowout of Kansas. Rodriguez collected 13 stops in the Big 12 Championship, plus 12 at Arizona State and 11 at Utah. His 117 tackles have included 11 tackles for loss. Of course, Rodriguez's impact was best felt in the way he got his hands on the football. He has swiped four interceptions, the most among linebackers in college football, and forced a national-best seven fumbles.
Rodriguez is the only player in at least the past 10 years to record at least 100 tackles, 10 TFLs, four interceptions and seven forced fumbles. As a result, he has won Bronko Nagurski Trophy, the Lombardi Award, the Butkus Award, and was the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year. He finished fifth in Heisman Trophy voting, making him the first off-ball linebacker to finish among the top five since Manti Te'o's runner-up finish in 2012. Rodriguez and Bailey won the Pony Express Award as the top duo in college football.
Of course, Tech's linebacking corps was more than just Rodriguez.
Junior Ben Roberts stands second on the team with 74 tackles, while sophomore John Curry has added 67, senior Bryce Ramirez has contributed 22, and freshman Brock Golwas has 16. Roberts was named the Most Outstanding Player of Tech's first Big 12 Championship win for becoming the first player in the game's 24-year history to intercept multiple passes.
Up front, Tech's story was a more modern one. Yes, Tech paid up to get Bailey and Romello Height from their former schools. But acquiring the pieces is not the end of the story. You have to make the pieces fit, and those pieces played better for Tech than they did for their other schools.
Stanford transfer Bailey is threatening to break the Texas Tech single-season record with 13.5 sacks, after posting 14.5 sacks over three seasons on The Farm. Romello Height has recorded nine sacks after combining for 6.5 at USC and Georgia Tech. In total, 10 different Red Raiders have contributed to their 39 sacks, which sit two shy of equaling the single-season school record.
Bailey was the Big 12's Defensive Newcomer of the Year and the Defensive Lineman of the Year, and Height joined Rodriguez and Bailey on the All-Big 12 First Team. Roberts was a Third Team All-Big 12 selection.
A Wofford graduate, Wood is in his first season as Texas Tech's defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach. He played wide receiver for the Terriers from 2001-05, spent 2006 as a high school assistant, and then joined his alma mater's staff upon graduation in 2007. He moved to safeties in 2011 and joined the Georgia Tech staff as safeties coach and special teams coordinator in 2018. With a stop at Army, Wood has coordinated defenses for Troy, Tulane, Houston and Texas Tech over the past four seasons.
A standout defensive end at BYU and Oklahoma, Ah You was a seventh-round pick of the Buffalo Bills in 2007 and played five seasons for the St. Louis Rams. He entered coaching as a special teams quality control at Oklahoma in 2015, and then spent 2016-18 as the defensive line coach at Vanderbilt. He spent time with the XFL's New York Guardians and with USC before joining Joey McGuire's staff at Texas Tech in 2022.
The FootballScoop Coaches of the Year awards presented by Teamworks are the only set of awards that recognize the most outstanding position coaches in college football. The finalists (James Laurinaitis [Ohio State], Glenn Schumann and Chidera Uzo-Diribe [Georgia], Jason Semore [Southern Miss] and Wood and Ah You) were selected based off of nominations by coaches, athletic directors, and athletic department personnel. The prior winners selected this year's winner.
Previous winners of the Linebackers Coach of the Year award are Bill McGovern (Boston College, 2008), Bob Fraser (Rutgers, 2009), Luke Fickell (Ohio State, 2010), Dave Huxtable (Wisconsin, 2011), Bob Gregory (Boise State, 2012), Jim Reid and LeVar Woods (Iowa, 2013), Jeff Casteel (Arizona, 2014), Dave Aranda and Tim Tibesear (Wisconsin, 2015), Mike Siravo (Temple, 2016), Tyson Veidt (Iowa State, 2017), Dave Aranda (LSU, 2018), Tim DeRuyter and Peter Sirmon (Cal, 2019), Joe Gillespie (Tulsa, 2020), Caleb Collins and Ron Roberts (Baylor, 2021), Seth Wallace (Iowa, 2022), Tony Gibson (NC State, 2023), and Joe Bowen (Buffalo, 2024).
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