LSU head football coach Lane Kiffin’s dogged determination isn’t just relegated to the recruiting trail for players. It’s been commonplace in his pursuit of assistant coach Charlie Weis Jr., who was one of five offensive assistants that followed him from Ole Miss.
Since their first alliance at Alabama in 2016, where Kiffin was the offensive coordinator to head coach Nick Saban and Weis, an offensive analyst, they established a like-minded bond for creating some of college football’s more dynamic offenses.
Weis followed Kiffin to Florida Atlantic for a couple of weeks when he took a job on the staff of the Atlanta Falcons where Steve Sarkisian was the offensive coordinator. Weis rejoined Kiffin at FAU for two years and served as his offensive coordinator before Kiffin became the head coach at Ole Miss in 2020.
Weis opted for a different path and was the offensive coordinator at South Florida for two years when he rejoined Kiffin at Ole Miss for four years and built the Rebels into a College Football Playoff team renowned for its mercurial offense.
When LSU hired away Kiffin on Nov. 30 and he asked several of his assistants to join him on an airplane bound for Baton Rouge, Weis was aboard for the ride of his life which included him going back and forth between the two schools. He remained offensive coordinator and play caller during the Rebels run in the playoffs and new head coach Pete Golding also made an attempt at keeping Weis in Oxford.
“I’m so focused right now on being here,” Weis said Friday during his only media availability this season. “That feels like that whole saga and everything that went down feels like it put 10 years on my life. I’m just so happy to be here now, (I’m) fired up. I love our players. It’s been a great group to work with. That’s the main focus right now. Just staying on track.”
Kiffin had to sweeten the pot to retain Weis from $6 million over three years to $7.5 million over the same span of time. Ole Miss had reportedly countered with a $2 million-a-year offer when Kiffin’s offer not only included more money but a clause that would make Weis the nation’s highest paid offensive coordinator.
“His stats are amazing and his ability to coach the quarterbacks and I think I think this quarterback’s (Sam Levitt) going to play really well and if he does, at some point people got to say, okay, what’s the common denominator here of these last three quarterbacks (Ole Miss’ Jaxon Dart and Trinidad Chambliss) and I would say they’re Charlie,” Kiffin said.
COACHING DNA
Weis, 33, and Kiffin have more in common than their penchant for building wide-open offenses. They’re also second-generation coaches that have followed the paths of their famous fathers.
Charlies Weis Sr. was the head coach at Notre Dame and Kansas but rose to prominence during his career as an NFL assistant coach.
Weis Sr. spent four years as the New England Patriots’ offensive coordinator, winning three Super Bowls. Weis Jr. followed his father into coaching, spending time as his manager at Kansas. He also helped the position coaches by directing drills and conducted position meetings for the quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers.
Weis Jr. was an intern for New England’s Volunteer Training Camp, working with the offensive staff, assisting tight ends coach Brian Daboll, the current head coach for the Tennessee Titans, with the creation of film cutups and organizing practice production notes for the quarterbacks.
Monte Kiffin, who passed away July 11, 2024, was regarded among the NFL’s greatest defensive minds. He was an assistant coach for six different teams and served as defensive coordinator with the Minnesota Vikings (1991), Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1996-2008) and Dallas Cowboys (2013).
He’s regarded as the father of the ‘Tampa 2’ defense which has been widely imitated.
“I think having both grown up in it and (having) really successful fathers that are public figure coaches, I feel like that we’re knowing well as we grew up, I think is a common thing that we have together,” Lane Kiffin said. “I think too it’s been cool of walking him through where in a way, he’s a younger version of me in some ways, being so young with so much success.”
Weis Jr. experienced the highs of lows of his father’s career.
“I got to see throughout my life my dad go through some really cool, amazing moments in his career,” he said. “Winning Super Bowls (were a high), but I also got to see some of the negatives of it, too. When he got fired from Notre Dame…and some other things happened, too. It was cool to see some of the relationships with his players over the course of time.
“That’s one of the coolest things about football is that there’s so much that goes into it,” he said. “You put time into it together; it becomes like family. You develop really close relationships. It was really cool seeing the Super Bowls, but I think that was something that attracted me to the game more than anything.”
THE START OF SOMETHING BIG
Weis credited the origin of spread offensive concepts to his time with assistant coach Kendal Briles while they were together with Kiffin at Florida Atlantic.
From the installation of the offense, Weis learned at a grass-roots level from both Briles, now the offensive coordinator at South Carolina, and Kiffin about a fast-paced system that’s become one of the best in the nation.
“It’s a really cool system,” Weis said. “It’s cool to see where the different branches have gone from the start of it. My dad was a pro-style guy and super NFL. Everything I heard was that and coach Kiffin, very similar and was very pro-style at Alabama. He kind of grew it at Alabama wide (offensive line) splits, tempo, some of the mechanics that allowed them to play really fast was unique. Over time we’ve molded this thing where there’s maybe more pro-style concept within. There’s a of the bones that still exist from that system.”
Weis is now in his ninth season as an offensive coordinator and play caller with offenses that have generated more than 30 points and 445 total yards six times during his career.
Weis earned the respect of his peers during his first two years with Kiffin at FAU, leading an offense which ranked in the Top 20 both years. In Weis’ final season the Owls, who were Conference USA champions, averaged 36.4 points, 448.6 total yards and his quarterback, Chris Robinson, ranked sixth nationally with 3,701 passing yards and 16th with 28 touchdown passes.
During their four-year run together under Kiffin and Weis, Ole Miss set records for total offense (7,345 in 2025), total yards per game (526.5 in ’24), passing yards (4,700 in ’25), passing yards per game (350.8 in ’24), and yards per play (7.3 in ’24).
Ole Miss had its first 11-win season and Peach Bowl win over Penn State in 2023 behind its powerful offense that averaged 461.9 total yards a game. The Rebels had five games with more than 500 total yards with a high of 706 – fifth best in school history – against LSU.
Weis also tutored two of the school’s top quarterbacks in eventual NFL first-round draft choice Jaxon Dart, now of the New York Giants, and Trinidad Chambliss, a Heisman Trophy candidate this season.
He said loyalty was a driving force in the ultimate decision to remain with Kiffin and join him at LSU.
“No. 1 Coach Kiffin,” he said. “He believed in me at a very early age, probably when not a lot of people would have taken a chance on a young coach and he did. I feel I owe him a lot for my career and the places he’s hired me. LSU is just a dream place to be.
“Growing up and watching college football, being at Alabama where I got my first job with coach Kiffin…Playing at LSU at night,” he said. “I think this environment is the coolest environment in all of sports to go play in. The thought of playing here and that’s our home crowd kind of game me chills.”
