Defensive line coach Joe Schaefer has joined coach Jason Candle’s first football staff at UConn, one of three additions announced Monday.

Aside from Schaefer, the Huskies are adding former Power 4 cornerback Sevyn Banks in a recruiting analyst/player development role and ex-college quarterback Brady Lichtenberg as an offensive analyst.

Schaefer is the veteran of the group, with big-program experience.

Most recently, he spent the past two seasons at Syracuse, where he coached defensive backs and helped in the development of All-ACC selection Clarence Lewis. He was one of four assistants fired by head coach Fran Brown on Dec. 1 after the Orange’s three-win season.

Before heading to Syracuse, Schaefer was the linebackers coach at Texas A&M (2022-23), defensive coordinator at Youngstown State (2020-21) and John Carroll (2018-19), recruiting coordinator at Iowa State (2017) and quality control coach at Maryland.

A former linebacker at Bowling Green, he also won a state championship in 2014 as the head coach of his alma mater, Benedictine High School in Cleveland.

Banks and Lichtenberg are young up-and-comers in the coaching realm.

Banks was a four-star prospect from Florida in the Class of 2018. The cornerback appeared in 36 games with Ohio State over four seasons (2018-21), then transferred to LSU for a final season available to him as the extra COVID-19 year.

In his second game of the 2022 season, on Oct. 1 against Auburn, he made head-to-head contact with the ball carrier when tackling him on the opening kickoff. He was taken off the field on a stretcher and to a hospital, and he didn’t return to the Tigers that season. He transitioned to coaching and scouting as a career.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Banks spent the 2023 season as the defensive coordinator at Orange Park High School in Florida. From July 2024 to the following July, he served an internship in football operations with the New York Jets.

Lichtenberg is a native of Ohio, where Candle spent 10 seasons as head coach at Toledo – in Lichtenberg’s hometown -- before arriving at UConn.

He held an offer from Toledo in the Class of 2021 but instead went to Cincinnati. After a redshirt season, he was a backup quarterback for four seasons (2022-25) and appeared in 16 games, throwing for 411 yards and four touchdowns with two interceptions.

Banks and Lichtenberg are additions to the list of new coaches announced by Candle in early January.

Schaefer is a replacement for LaTroy Lewis as defensive line coach, who was announced in the first group of new hires. He followed Candle from Toledo, where he coached for one season, but on Feb. 10, Lewis resigned to become assistant defensive line coach of the Atlanta Falcons.

The NFL team fired him on Feb. 27 after allegations of sexual assault that a woman said occurred when Lewis was an assistant coach at Michigan, prior to his time at Toledo.

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