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Devin Redd, who has a wealth of college and professional coaching experience, wants to bring the energy of all Baltimore to Mount Carmel’s football program.
The 2005 Cardinal Gibbons graduate calls it “The Brand.” Redd was hired as Mount Carmel’s coach, following a search that included nearly 50 candidates after former coach Daryl Jackson stepped down.
“What we’re building at Mount Carmel is what we call ‘The Brand,’” Redd said. “It’s our brand and our brand represents everyone in that building from grades K-12 and their families.
“We want to build a brand that’s not only recognizable in the community, but one that’s recognizable in the state and more importantly, recognizable in the country.”
Redd brings experience from the professional, college and high school levels. He worked at Rutgers in the player development office in 2018 under coach Chris Ash, before being promoted to the offensive quality control coach in 2019 under coach Greg Schiano. According to Redd, his time under Schiano was fruitful, calling it “the most pivotal point” of his career as a coach.
“That’s what really prepared me for this moment at Mount Carmel. Just watching how Greg Schiano came in and inserted a culture, inserted a pathway,” Redd said. “That’s what opened the door for me to be here at Mount Carmel and going through this process, being exposed to that, is what has prepared me for this moment.”
The former Southern Baptist University running back served as a coaching apprentice under the NFL’s Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship program with Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores and then-assistant Jim Caldwell in 2019. He spent last season learning from Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski and former Morgan State coach Stump Mitchell.
Varsity Highlights
Redd served as Seton Hill’s running backs and tight ends coach in 2016-2018. He was the assistant running backs coach at Toledo in 2015, where he coached current Cleveland Browns running back Kareem Hunt. Redd spent the 2014 season at St. Frances as the offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach and was the passing game coordinator for five seasons at Calvert Hall.
Redd and Corey Robinson, who serves as a secondary assistant with the New Orleans Saints, created the Next Level Nation 7-on-7 program. The program was “a nonprofit agency that set to transform the lives of student athletes and their families through a hands-on approach with individualized road maps to success,” according to Redd’s Seton Hill bio. That same program helped players such as former Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets defensive end Charles Tapper get into college programs.
Redd calls the story of his football journey “The Love That Makes Me Tick.” He began playing recreational football for the Poppleton Bears in the Lexington Terrace neighborhood of Baltimore. He recalls a story of having to weigh in and being consistently underweight. His father put 5-pound weights in each of his thigh pads to play each week. A week after making weight, he scored three touchdowns.
Now, Redd looks to bring that same determination as a coach for the Essex school, just about 25 minutes from where he grew up.
“My wish was to come home, put together the best staff, best role models, the best men to lead young men on and off of the field and give young men in this community — in this state — an opportunity that they haven’t seen before, I thank God for placing the vision inside of me,” Redd said. “I thank God for giving me this opportunity. I’m so grateful and so humbled for this moment.”
According to Mount Carmel athletic director Alex Brylske, school president Lawrence Callahan was instrumental in the hiring. Callahan has experience hiring a number of superintendents and presidents for archdioceses around the country. The rest of school leadership was directly involved in the hire, making sure they found a person that represented the school’s values.
“The foundation of our process was getting value from our community,” Brylske said. “We were making sure that we were hiring a candidate that was someone that our community and school was hiring. We created multiple tiers of interviews — getting him in front of a lot of people. I really ended up realizing my role in the process was a shepherd for the coaches — building a relationship with them, helping them to understand what Mount Carmel is, what it’s all about and the rest of our community was vetting for it.”