MUNCIE — Mike Uremovich’s new-look staff with Ball State football features a unique positional coach that you won’t find anywhere else in the FBS.
At 26 years old, Jalen Moss is one of the youngest new coaches on the Cardinals’ staff and has spent the entirety of his football career in Indiana. Moss played defensive back at Fishers High School and went on to play at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne from 2017-20. He earned his bachelor’s degree in business management at USF and spent his last season of college eligibility playing at Indiana State in 2021.
Moss’ coaching career began during his time in Fort Wayne, where he served as a volunteer assistant at Homestead High School. After finishing his playing career with the Sycamores, Moss was hired by Uremovich as Butler’s cornerbacks coach in 2022 and spent each of the last three seasons in that role.
Like most of the Ball State coaching staff, Moss came with Uremovich from Indianapolis to Muncie. However, Moss has taken on a new role as the Cardinals’ snipers coach, focusing on the hybrid linebacker-safety position introduced last season by defensive coordinator Jeff Knowles.
“It’s a little bit different,” Moss said. “You’re more worried about the run fits and things like that, you’re more in tune with the things that are going in the box. At corner, it’s very technical and not so much scheme-based, versus our snipers, it’s more of a scheme-based than technical sometimes.”
Knowles has described the position as a “jack of all trades.” Snipers have to be able to fill gaps in the run game and blitz in the pass game — like linebackers — while also providing good coverage against the quick slot receivers and athletic tight ends of today’s game — like safeties or nickel corners. Schematically, the snipers operate as strongside linebackers, often referred to as SAM, but they have the build and movement of safeties.
“The way we use them, our guys are safety bodies, right?” Moss said. “They’re guys that are really safeties, but they’re more physical safeties, I would say. We use them in both, but they’ve definitely got to be some of the smartest kids on our team, in regards to just knowing how to line up and being able to fit the run like the backers a lot of times and being able to play coverage like a safety sometimes, too.”
Having one coach designated to such a specific position is rare in college football — even among Power 4 programs. Some schools — like Georgia, North Carolina State and Northwestern — have nickels/stars coaches, but most teams just have a cornerbacks coach and a safeties coach. In the Mid-American Conference, Buffalo safeties coach Brian Dougherty is listed on the team’s website as a safeties/nickels coach, while Eastern Michigan recently promoted defensive analyst Sean Dugan to alphas coach — a somewhat similar position to sniper according to a 2023 post from EMU fan blog The Ypsilanti 11.
Moss has the distinction of being the only named snipers coach in the FBS. If not for Butler continuing to use the terminology and employ a snipers coach, he would be the only snipers coach in major college football.
According to Knowles, implementing the position on the staff has been positive thus far. In practice, Moss and the Cardinals’ five snipers go back and forth between linebacker and safety work during individual drills, whereas their activities for the rest of practice depend on the daily install.
“If it’s a day when we’re going to be fitting like backers, we’ll do key drill and everything with Coach Knowles and the other inside backers,” Moss said. “But if we’re more in our safety world, then we’ll do a lot more stuff together with the safeties and the corners.”
Having Moss around has also taken some workload off of Knowles, allowing him to focus more on being the linebackers coach as well as coordinating the rest of the defense.
“It takes away a lot of responsibility and kind of lessens what I have to do with the rest of the linebackers,” Knowles said. “And that position, really, there’s a lot of DB aspects to that job, so it is nice to be able to get their own individualized practice.”
It was actually Knowles who discovered the young snipers coach. Towards the end of his playing career, Moss was working out with Knowles’ son, Gannon — who plays linebacker at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis and recently committed to Ball State’s 2026 recruiting class. Knowles had just joined Uremovich’s staff at Butler as the defensive coordinator and knew the Bulldogs were looking for a young defensive coach, so he floated the idea.
“Watching him, he was just finishing up playing, and you can tell he had passion for the sport and the position,” Knowles said. “I just kind of threw it out there to him, ‘Once you’re done, go see what you can get playing-wise, and once you fulfill that, do you think you’d want to coach?’ And he was all about it. It’s just good to have another young coach that loves football, is eager to learn and very passionate about it.”
So who will play sniper for Ball State in 2025? The Cardinals went after plenty of safeties in the transfer portal this offseason, and some of those names have been spending time with Moss learning the nuances of the position. Old Dominion transfer Ashton Whitner and Virginia Union transfer Muheem McCargo — who also played under Knowles at Temple — have impressed Moss thus far and are among the most experienced snipers, with Whitner a redshirt junior and McCargo a redshirt senior.
Another experienced player who has spent time at sniper this offseason is redshirt senior Zavier Simpson. He played weakside linebacker, or WILL, in the spring but transitioned to sniper this summer and has impressed Moss with his physicality. Redshirt freshmen Micah Lillard and Russell Peterson have also spent the offseason training with the snipers and could be names to keep an eye on for the future at that spot.
“All the guys have done a great job,” Moss said. “Just picking up a scheme, buying into the system and also buying into me as a coach.”
Contact Cade Hampton via email at cbhampton@muncie.gannett.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @CadeHamp10.
