After emotional sendoff for Brad Lambert, is stage set for Charlotte 49ers success?
The Charlotte 49ers closed out their football season — and the Brad Lambert era — with a 27-24 victory Saturday against Florida Atlantic. It was the final game for Lambert, whose sixth and final season as coach produced a 5-7 record, 4-4 in Conference USA.
It’s not often that a coach is carried off the field by his players and gets a Gatorade bath after completing a five-victory season. But such is the depth of feeling the 49ers have for Lambert, who was fired Nov. 19 but allowed by athletics director Mike Hill to coach one final game.
Despite a marked improvement from the 1-11 debacle of 2017, Lambert, the only coach the 49ers have had in their six seasons of existence, didn’t do enough to keep his job.
Players such as kicker Jonathan Cruz, whose 56-yard field goal with 25 seconds remaining won the FAU game, and quarterback Chris Reynolds are among several on the 49ers roster who likely wouldn’t have gotten a chance to play at the Football Bowl Subdivision level had it not been for Lambert’s willingness to roll the recruiting dice on them.
Whomever the new 49ers coach is, he will inherit a program poised to take another step forward. Hill said last week that “being just OK is not OK,” at Charlotte any more, and Lambert built a solid platform for the program to go to the next level. The 49ers have excellent, essentially brand-new facilities, are located in a prime recruiting area and, in Hill, an athletics director with a mandate to win championships.
The quick move up to the FBS in 2015 wasn’t an unreasonable justification for the 49ers to struggle for a few years at college football’s highest level (although other programs with similar start-up histories, such as Georgia State, Texas-San Antonio and South Alabama, have already played in bowls). But C-USA, one of the FBS’s so-called “Group Of 5” leagues, isn’t so competitive that Charlotte shouldn’t expect to contend, which the 49ers did until a three-game losing streak late in the season ended that.
All this, of course, is dependent on whomever Hill hires to replace Lambert, who had a record of 22-48. The new coach will inherit a roster that includes 13 returning starters (five on offense, counting quarterback; eight on defense). Among them are players who had all-conference worthy seasons — running back Benny LeMay, receiver Victor Tucker, defensive end Alex Highsmith, linebacker Jeff Gemmell, safety Ben DeLuca and Cruz.
The new coach will also need to fix some things. Recruiting needs to step up a notch, probably beginning in Charlotte, where Hill said the 49ers need “to plant the flag.” Despite having 59 players from North Carolina and 28 from the Charlotte region, only 13 49ers this season were from Mecklenburg County.
Then there is the attendance issue. The 49ers averaged 11,710 in 15,314-seat Richardson Stadium, a drop from the 11,903 average from the one-victory 2017 season. Although winning (theoretically, at least) might solve that, the new coach will need to get out there and connect with the students, fans, alumni and community.
On the field, there will be a quarterback battle between sophomore Reynolds (who was hurt in this season’s sixth game), senior Evan Shirreffs and, possibly, redshirt freshman Brady Pope. Many of the graduation losses come on the offensive line.
Hill said he didn’t have a timetable for hiring the new coach, although he added he’d like to get it done by the mid-December early-signing period.
But, thanks to Lambert, the stage has been set.