Jake Bentley begins next chapter in his football career — this time as a coach
Jake Bentley has a renewed love of football, and he’s ready to share it as he begins his coaching career.
The former South Carolina quarterback is in his first month on the job as a graduate assistant at Florida Atlantic, a Conference USA school located in Boca Raton, Florida. Bentley will be working with the quarterbacks and helping first-year offensive coordinator Brent Dearmon on Willie Taggart’s coaching staff.
“I just want to add value to the team and want to use my experiences to help the quarterbacks here, make them better and help them grow — just like many GAs have helped me in my life,” Bentley told The State. “Just the other day, we were looking at recruits on the (Pro Football Focus) website, put my name in and saw I had taken 3,000 and some snaps. So, hopefully in 3,000 snaps, I was able to pick up on things and can give back to the guys on the team.”
Bentley, who threw for 10,888 yards in his college career, seemed to be destined for coaching once his playing career wrapped up this season at South Alabama. His father, Bobby, was a successful high school coach at Byrnes High in South Carolina and coached in college at Presbyterian, Auburn, South Carolina and now at South Florida as the receivers coach/passing game coordinator for head coach Jeff Scott.
Bentley’s brother Chas Dodd is an assistant strength and conditioning coach at Rutgers, and his other older brother Shuler Bentley is an offensive analyst at Coastal Carolina.
“So many coaches in my life have influenced me to get where I am today. To see the impact my dad has had, I always wanted to give back the same way,” Jake Bentley said. “My dad always said it is not about the rings and things, it is about the relationships you build and the impact you can have on people. That is what I want to accomplish in my career.”
Bentley said he would like to work on the same staff as his father one day. He looked into joining his dad at USF, but there were no graduate assistant spots available.
He landed at FAU because of his relationship with Dearmon, who worked with his father at Auburn and Jake got to know when he was in high school at Opelika High in Alabama. Dearmon is in his first year at FAU after coaching Middle Tennessee last season.
At FAU, Bentley also will work on getting his master’s degree in sports management. He received his master of business administration while at South Alabama, the final of three stops during his college career.
At the University of South Carolina, Bentley started at QB as a freshman and played from 2016 to 2019. He set several school records, including a 510-yard, five-touchdown performance against Clemson in 2018.
But Bentley suffered a Lisfranc injury in the season opener of his senior year against North Carolina and redshirted. After the season, he decided to transfer to Utah.
Bentley, who didn’t win the starting job at Utah initially, ended up starting the final five games of the season in a COVID-shortened year. He threw for 882 yards and six touchdowns.
But somewhere between his injury in his final year at USC and the up-and-down nature of his time at Utah, he said he lost his enthusiasm for the game. His time at South Alabama changed that, he said. That’s where he took advantage of the extra year of eligibility the NCAA put in place because of COVID.
Bentley threw for 2,476 yards and 16 touchdowns in the 2021 season. He tore an ACL and MCL in the next-to-last game against Troy but gutted it out and played in the season finale against Coastal Carolina. He passed for 354 yards and two touchdowns in that game.
A week after the season, he had surgery on his knee and is doing well. He said he should resume jogging in about a week or so.
“At South Alabama, I really found the love of football again and really enjoyed playing. Playing for Kane Wommack (head coach) and Major Applewhite (offensive coordinator) to end my career really did a lot for me,” Bentley said. “Coach Wommack really made the importance of football being fun. It doesn’t have to be a high-strung environment. You can have fun and enjoy being around one another. I was able to go to Mobile and loved every minute of it.”
This story was originally published February 1, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
