Terry Sims sets high goals as new head football coach at Clark Atlanta
ATLANTA, GA – Clark Atlanta introduced former Bethune Cookman head coach Terry Sims as the new head coach of the Panthers football team last Thursday.
Sims led B-CU from 2015 to 2022 including leading the Wildcats after they transitioned in the 2021 season from the Mid Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) to the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC). Overall, he compiled a 38-39 record.
He was 34-21 overall during five seasons in the MEAC with a 27-10 conference record including a share of the 2015 MEAC title. He had back-to-back 2-9 overall and 2-6 conference records in the 2021 and 2022 seasons in the SWAC.
“We are thrilled to welcome Coach Terry Sims to our university. His dedication to fostering player development and achieving competitive excellence aligns perfectly with our vision for the Panthers football program,” said Dr. Jerel Drew, CAU’s athletics director. “We look forward to an exciting chapter under his guidance.”
“I didn’t come here to compete, I came here to win,’ Sims said during the press conference. “I didn’t come to have a good football program, I came to sustain a successful championship football program.”
“I think Clark Atlanta is a sleeping giant,” Sims told HBCU Gameday’s Symone Stanley after the press conference. “There was a good base here for football. You’re in the state of Georgia, you’re in Atlanta, and in an institution like Clark Atlanta where you’re going to get a great education and play a great brand of football. It was just attractive from the start.”
Sims has been serving as the director of football operations at Alabama State for the past three seasons under head coach Eddie Robinson Jr. He has also served stints as an assistant at HBCUs Texas Southern, Prairie View A&M and Howard and at Louisville, Austin Peay and Louisiana-Lafayette. He is replacing Teddy Keaton who was 7-3-1 in 2024 and played for the SIAC championship before posting a 3-7 mark last season.
Coach Sims holds a Master’s Degree in Sports Administration from Louisville and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Knoxville College.
D. J. Williams named new quarterbacks coach for NFL’s Washington Commanders
The Washington Commanders have hired former Grambling quarterback D. J. Williams, the son of franchise great and fellow Grambling quarterback Doug Williams, to be their quarterbacks coach.
D. J. Williams served as Atlanta’s quarterbacks coach this season and was the Falcons’ assistant quarterbacks coach/offensive assistant in 2024. D.J. spent five years with New Orleans as an offensive assistant before joining Atlanta. He also spent 2018 working in the Saints’ football operations department.
D. J. participated in the NFL/Black College Football Hall of Fame quarterback coaching summit from 2019 to ’21, and again in ’23. He was the quarterbacks coach of the National Team at the 2023 Senior Bowl.
He played at Grambling from 2011 to 2014 in the second of his father’s two stints (1998-2002, 2011-13) leading the G-Men.
Doug Williams, a two-time black college player of year at Grambling and first round draft choice of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1978, became the first black college quarterback to win the Super Bowl when he led the then-named Redskins to a 42-10 rout of Denver for the Super Bowl XXII title in 1988. He completed 18 of 29 passes for a then-record 340 passing yards with four touchdown passes in that game to earn Super Bowl MVP honors, the first black quarterback or black college player to earn that award.
Williams came back to the Washington franchise in 2014 as a personnel executive after stints as head coach at Morehouse and Grambling. For the Tigers, he won three consecutive Southwestern Athletic Conference titles from 2000 to 2002. He was promoted to the position of Washington’s senior vice president of player personnel in June 2017 and following a front office restructure after the hiring of Ron Rivera as head coach, Williams was named the team’s senior vice president of player development.
He remains with the organization now as a senior adviser to general manager Adam Peters.
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON: D. J. Williams (foreground, background l. ) is the new quarterbacks coach with the NFL’s Washington Commanders. He will be joining his father Doug (background r., background l. top), a former Washington quarterback and current senior advisor with the NFL franchise. Both played quarterback at Grambling.
Black college products named defensive coordinators in the NFL with Dallas and Washington
The black college coaching tree has to be shaking after the Dallas Cowboys announced last week that they hired Christopher Parker, a former defensive backs coach at both Virginia State and Norfolk State, to be their new defensive coordinator and the Washington Commanders announced Monday that Daronte Jones, who played cornerback at Morgan State from 1997 to 2001 and was the assistant head coach and defensive coordinator at Bowie State from 2005 to 2009, is leaving the Minnesota Vikings to become their new defensive coordinator.
The two have similar backgrounds.
Parker, 34, a Flemington, N. J. native, played wide receiver and defensive back at Richmond before two-year stints at VSU (2013-14) and NSU (2015-16). He spent one year as a defensive analyst at Notre Dame (2017) and Texas A&M (2018) before jumping to the NFL with Green Bay as a defensive quality control analyst (2019-2020) and as Denver’s defensive backs coach (2021-23). He spent the last two seasons as defensive backs coach and passing game coordinator with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Jones, 47, a Capital Heights Md. native, had previous stints as with the Miami Dolphins (2016-17) as an assistant defensive backs coach and the Cincinnati Bengals (2018-19) as a defensive backs coach and then began his time with the Minnesota in 2020 as the DBs coach. In 2021, Jones was LSU’s defensive coordinator before returning to Minnesota for the past three years under defensive coordinator Brian Flores as defensive backs coach and passing game coordinator.
Before going to Bowie State, Jones, 47, a Capital Heights, Md. native, worked as a graduate assistant at Lenoir–Rhyne. He also coached cornerbacks at UCLA, for the Montreal Allouettes of the CFL, at Hawaii and Wisconsin.
BCSP NFL PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
For Conference Championship games of January 25, 2026
DEFENSE
– #14 COBIE DURANT, CB, Los Angeles Rams (4th season, SOUTH CAROLINA STATE) – In the Rams’ 31-27 loss to Seattle Sunday in the NFC Championship game, Durant started at cornerback and finished with five total tackles, four solos, and two pass break-up. He was the primary defender on Jason Bobo’s 17-yard third-quarter touchdown and was flagged for defensive holding in the Seahawks’ final possession, giving Seattle a first down just before the two-minute warning. Durant was in for 52 plays on defense (78%) and five on special teams (17%).
OFFENSE & SPECIAL TEAMS
– #19 XAVIER SMITH, WR/KR, Los Angeles Rams (3rd season, FLORIDA A&M) – In the Rams’ 31-27 loss to Seattle Sunday in the NFC Championship game, Smith fair caught one punt and muffed and fumbled a third quarter punt that was recovered by Seattle at the Rams’ 17-yard line. The Seahawks scored two plays later on Jason Bobo’s catch on Rams’ defensive back Cobie Durant. Smith was in for nine plays on offense (15%) but was not targeted and was in for six special teams’ snaps (21%).
