New favorites potentially emerge in Maryland RB coach search?

After two years of struggling with injuries and poor play at running back, the Indianapolis Colts have parted ways with running backs coach David Walker. Recognize the name? He was one of Randy Edsall's first staff hires at Maryland, coming over from Pitt in January 2011 as the Terps' running backs coach before being hired by the Colts just a few months later.

With his Maryland replacement, Andre Powell, now off to Pitt, Edsall could return to his original target to fill the open spot on the staff. A disclaimer: that's not based on any inside information, but just taking an educated guess based on his previous hiring practices. It'll have to do as the only lead we have -- the head coach is notoriously secret with his staff hires, and no names have been tossed around publicly yet (besides the hypothetical list we put together).

[Update, 12:04 p.m.: Former Jaguars running backs coach Terry Richardson, who was on our original list, is also looking for a new job. Richardson was Edsall's long-time running backs coach at UConn and could get a look at the position.]

Walker coached LeSean McCoy and Dion Lewis while at Pitt, and is an experienced recruiter in Big Ten territory. With the Panthers, he mostly covered northern Pennsylvania as well as New York, New Jersey and Ohio. Before his time at Pitt, Walker was a long-time assistant at Syracuse (but his time never overlapped with Edsall's). He coached six eventual NFL running backs with the Orange, including three of their top seven all-time leading rushers and a Syracuse record four straight 1,000-yard rushers.

A hire like Purdue's Jafar Williams might be a bigger splash due to his recruiting acumen and history with the school, but Edsall has shown in the past that he was willing to hire Wilson. It's as close to a "favorite" as we'll likely come (until a report about the eventual hire trickles out a day before), and bringing in a coach with NFL experience is rarely a bad thing.