New Colts assistant coach Andrew Hayes-Stoker hired by Illinois

The Indianapolis Colts made several coaching moves this offseason in an effort to improve their staff, and one of the people hired by head coach Chuck Pagano was Andrew Hayes-Stoker, who became the team's assistant to the head coach.  He didn't stick around in Indianapolis long, however, as Sports Illustrated's Thayer Evans reports that Hayes-Stoker is leaving for Illinois to join Lovie Smith's coaching staff as wide receivers coach.

This shouldn't be too surprising, as Hayes-Stoker was on Smith's staff with the Buccaneers last season as the receivers coach.  Thus, with Smith now taking over at Illinois, it makes sense why he'd want to hire Hayes-Stoker to once again be his wide receivers coach.  When Dirk Koetter took over for Smith after he was fired, Koetter replaced Hayes-Stoker with his own choice as receivers coach in Todd Monken, who also became the team's offensive coordinator.  In his one year as the receivers coach in Tampa Bay, however, he did a pretty good job with a talented group.  Before that, he coached running backs at Florida Atlantic University (2013) and worked with Lovie Smith for several years before that - as the football operations and offensive assistant with the Chicago Bears for four seasons (2006-2009) and then as the wide receivers coach in Chicago for three seasons (2010-2012).  He has numerous connections with Smith, then, so this makes perfect sense.

With that said, it still hurts the Colts to lose one of the coaches they just recently hired, though perhaps not as much with Hayes-Stoker as with some of the other coaches.  It's still unclear what his role was going to be in Indianapolis, and he still didn't even have his own bio on the Colts website like the other coaches do.  So perhaps his role wasn't going to be great in Indy, but either way, Andrew Hayes-Stoker is now leaving to join Lovie Smith as the wide receivers coach at Illinois.