Shawn Bryson is in his third season as the Mocs Running Backs coach. He was a captain on Tennessee’s 1998 National Championship team, and is an eight-year veteran of the NFL.
Bryson coaches a stout Mocs rushing attack that has put up two of the top five rushing totals in school history. In 2015, the Mocs ran for a school-record 3,145 yards (241.9 per game). Last season, UTC totaled 2,682 (206.3) which was the fourth-highest mark in school history.
Under Bryson's tuteledge, running back Derrick Craine was a two-time All-Southern Conference honoree. Craine set a new UTC single-season rushing record with 1,251 yards on the ground in 2015, and topped the 1,000-yard mark again last season.
Craine and quarterback Jacob Huesman both ran for over 1,000 yards in 2015, just the 35th time in FCS history that teammates put up 1,000 yards in the same season.
A standout ball carrier in his own right, Bryson was taken in the third round of the 1999 NFL Draft by the Buffalo Bills. He played for the Bills from 1999-02 and then spent the rest of his career with the Detroit Lions (2003-06).
Bryson entered collegiate coaching as the fullbacks coach at Lenior-Rhyne University in 2012. The Bears advanced to the NCAA Division II Playoffs for the first time in school history, finishing the year No. 2 in the nation in rushing.
He followed that with a stop at Temple as a graduate assistant in 2013 and was the Running Backs coach at Florida A&M in 2014.
Bryson is heavily involved with coaching opportunities with the NFLPA. In 2012, he was one of seven former players selected to take part in an exclusive coaching internship. He also served under Dick Vermeil as the assistant running backs coach at the 2014 NFLPA Collegiate Bowl.
A native of Franklin, N.C., Bryson graduated from Tennessee with a Political Science degree in 2011.
Updated December 2016.
