Former Miami Dolphins secondary coach Lou Anarumo is Bengals DC
By Brian Miller
The Miami Dolphins once had Lou Anarumo running their corner backs and now he has been hired as the Bengals defensive coordinator.
It isn’t known if Lou Anarumo was the first choice for Zac Taylor’s defensive coordinator job or the 10th choice but either way the two former Miami Dolphins coaches will be working together once again. Anarumo was last with the New York Giants.
The job will not be his first as a defensive coordinator however. In 2015 he was named interim DC when the Dolphins fired Kevin Coyle. He was retained by Adam Gase in 2016 but was moved back to running the defensive backs.
Anarumo joined the Dolphins with Joe Philbin in 2012 and it was his first NFL job. He previously was the assistant head coach and secondary coach for Harvard. At the time, Joe Philbin ran the offensive line. He was at Purdue immediately before joining the Dolphins.
After leaving the Dolphins prior to the 2018 season he coached the secondary in New York with the Giants. Now, he is running the entire Bengals defense. His rise is surprising in that he doesn’t have a lot of coaching experience at the NFL level having been in the league only seven years.
During his time with the Dolphins, Anarumo worked with Zach Taylor who at the time was the quarterback coach under Joe Philbin. Taylor worked at Texas A&M under his father-in-law Mike Sherman. He was brought to Miami when Philbin hired Sherman to be the offensive coordinator.
In 2014 after Sherman was fired, Taylor remained as the QB coach but in 2015 he was appointed the interim OC after Bill Lazor was fired and finished the season under interim head coach Dan Campbell. In 2017, Taylor joined the Rams as the wide-receiver coach and in 2018 served as the quarterbacks coach.
Taylor was introduced as the Bengals new head coach a day after Miami announced Brian Flores was hired as theirs. It will be interesting to watch how things play out in Cincinnati with both coaches having little top coaching experience and only interim tags at two of the top assistant coaching positions.