UMass football: Minutemen add two new coaches on the defensive side of the ball

Joe Harasymiak speaks as the new UMass head football coach earlier this month during a press conference at the Martin Jacobson Football Performance Center in Amherst.

Joe Harasymiak speaks as the new UMass head football coach earlier this month during a press conference at the Martin Jacobson Football Performance Center in Amherst. PHOTO BY DAN LITTLE

By GARRETT COTE

Staff Writer

Published: 12-16-2024 3:07 PM

AMHERST — UMass football head coach Joe Harasymiak continues to add to his defensive coaching staff, and a pair of new hires were made over the past several days – sources told the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

On Friday, UMass agreed to terms with Nyeem Wartman-White as its new defensive line coach. Wartman-White spent two seasons as Akron's defensive line coach after two years coaching the same position at New Hampshire. During his playing days, he was a standout linebacker at Penn State from 2012-16. Wartman-White was named to the Butkus Award Preseason Watch List as a senior (2016) and made a career-high 11 tackles in the 2014 New Era Pinstripe Bowl against Boston College.

Current Zips head coach Joe Moorhead brought Wartman-White on board his Mississippi State staff as a graduate assistant while leading the Bulldogs program. Wartman-White clearly stuck out to Moorhead, as he was hired to coach the defensive line at Akron in 2023 – a year after Moorhead became head coach in 2022.

Elsewhere, sources told the Gazette on Monday morning that the Minutemen would also be welcoming former New Hampshire associate head coach/defensive coordinator Garrett Gillick as the team’s next linebackers coach. Prior to being the defensive coordinator at UNH, Gillick coached the Wildcats’ linebackers for the better part of a decade.

Gillick has extensive ties to the Northeast, as he graduated from Maine in 2000, coached high school football in the Commonwealth at Lowell High School and Methuen High School and spent three seasons as an assistant at Bentley University – where he coached the defensive line and secondary. 

Harasymiak has done lots of work to his defensive staff to this point, but has yet to make any offensive hires as of Monday morning. Offensive line coach Alex Miller and tight ends coach Matt Layman – both of whom were on Don Brown’s staff – still remain with the Minutemen, per the UMass athletics website.