Buster Faulkner, the reported next offensive coordinator at Florida and the current offensive coordinator at Georgia Tech, was named the 2025 Offensive Coordinator of the Year by FootballScoop.
The award is voted on by past winners. Previous winners of the award include Kliff Kingsbury, Lincoln Riley, Lane Kiffin, Josh Heupel and Mike Shanahan.
Faulkner, 44, is also a 2025 Broyles Award semifinalist, an award which honors the top assistant coach in college football. He is one of seven offensive coordinators to be named a semifinalist for the award.
His Georgia Tech offense ranked No. 12 in total offense nationally with 466.3 yards per game. They also averaged 7.09 yards per play, tied for seventh best in the country. They also jumped from 28.5 points per game in 2024 to 33.1 in 2025.
Faulkner's Yellow Jackets averaged 203 yards per game and 5.6 yards per carry, which ranked 11th nationally. Georgia Tech ran for multiple touchdowns in 11 of 12 games.
The Yellow Jackets were also a top-20 unit on third down and allowed only nine sacks all season.
Prior to arriving at Georgia Tech, Faulkner served as an offensive coordinator at numerous different programs and has also won two national championships as an assistant during his time at Georgia.
A college quarterback at Valdosta State and Texas A&M Commerce from 2000-2004, the Georgia native began his coaching career as a student assistant at Valdosta State in 2005 before becoming a graduate assistant with Georgia in 2006.
He then returned to Valdosta State, serving as its quarterback coach in 2007 and its offensive coordinator in 2008. After a brief stint as Central Arkansas quarterbacks coach in 2009 and Murray State offensive coordinator in 2010, Faulkner settled in at Middle Tennessee State.
From 2011-2015, he served as the Blue Raiders’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. In his five seasons at MTSU, the Blue Raiders averaged more than 31 points a game, and from 2013-15, put up more than 5,000 total yards each season.
He then departed for Arkansas State, serving as its offensive coordinator from 2016-2018. There, his Red Wolves ranked in the top 20 in total offense in 2017 and 2018, both of which led the Sun Belt Conference.
After a one-year stint with Southern Miss in 2019, Faulkner became the quarterbacks coach and a quality control assistant at Georgia from 2020-2022. He oversaw the development of Stetson Bennett and was part of Kirby Smart’s staff that won back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022.
Contact Max Bernstein at mbernstein@alligator.org. Follow him on X @maxbernstein23.
Max is in his sixth semester at The Alligator and now serves as The Alligator's Football Reporter and is a junior sports journalism student. He previously served as The Alligator's Sports Editor, and served as reporter for women's tennis, volleyball and lacrosse. He also has made multiple appearances on the Paul Finebaum Show. He wants to shoutout his cats, Scooter and Zoe, and niche former Florida Panthers players (shoutout Tomas Kopecky).
