Confirmed. He gone.
Malzahn hires new OL CoachAuburn, AL
December 7, 2020
Auburn head football coach Gus Malzahn moved quickly to fill the gap left on his coaching staff when offensive line coach J.B. Grimes stepped down.
"We're pleased to welcome Hector Ramirez to our staff," Malzahn said. "We appreciate everything J.B. did for us and we wish him well, but we're excited to bring some new ideas and innovation to the staff.
"Auburn has a great tradition of producing some fine offensive linemen and we're going to continue that. I believe we can win championships here and we're gonna."
Ramirez is currently the assistant manager of the Auburn, Alabama Waffle House and one of Malzahn's closest friends in the town.
"We're going to work hard with Hector to get him up to speed, but I gotta tell you it's going to be great having somebody working with me every day who I'm really familiar with. I've had a chance to watch Hector work and I'm really comfortable with his ethic and his ability to juggle multiple tasks.
"We're a running team and victories at Auburn start on the offensive and defensive line. It's the same at Waffle House. I've seen Hector handling a couple of hundred drunk college students and keeping that line moving while his staff scrambled like crazy to get all those orders filled. He was great under pressure. Just unflappable. My waffles were always perfect. That ability to multi-task and that attention to detail is what we're looking for.
"Scattered, covered, smothered, capped, chunked and topped. That's what our offensive line is going to be with Hector leading them."
Malzahn met Hector about eight years ago and said that he often designs plays at his standard Waffle House table using the salt shaker as QB, butter for the receivers, a balled up straw paper as the running back and jelly packets for the offensive line.
Over the years, Hector has joined Malzahn and helped him move the jelly around. Sometimes Hector just needed the jelly for another table, but other times he did help Malzahn generate some ideas. Legend has it that Hector designed the offensive line set for Malzahn's famous whirlybird plays.
"That thing's gonna work," Malzahn said of the dipsydoodle bird play. "We're gonna keep coming back to it until it does. Hector's gonna be a big help with that."
Ramirez signed a four-year deal worth approximately $450,000 per year, a step up from his current $51,000 salary at WH.
"It's not that much," Malzahn said of the salary. "My BMW cost more than that."