SAN DIEGO – San Diego State football head coach Brady Hoke announced Ryan Lindley, the school's all-time passing leader, as an assistant coach on Monday. Lindley, who served as a graduate assistant coach with the Aztecs for part of the 2018 season, will coach the SDSU quarterbacks.
Lindley was a four-year starter at San Diego State from 2008-11, where he set program passing records in yards (12,690), touchdowns (90), completions (961), attempts (1,732), starts (49), consecutive starts (44) and victories (23, which has been broken). Lindley was a second-team all-MW selection in 2010, a three-time MW Offensive Player of the Week and a four-time Byron H. Chase Memorial Trophy honoree (SDSU's outstanding offensive player).
Lindley was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals in the sixth round of the 2012 NFL Draft. For his NFL career, he played in nine games at Arizona and started six times, and later played in one game for Indianapolis during the 2015 season. Lindley finished his professional career with the Ottawa Redblacks in 2017, throwing for 391 yards and a touchdown, and scoring five touchdowns on the ground.
Following his first stint at San Diego State as a graduate assistant in 2018, Lindley worked in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns as the running backs coach for the rest of the 2018 campaign and the quarterbacks coach in 2019. He then returned to the college ranks, becoming an offensive analyst at Utah for 2020, working with former Aztec offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig, before spending the past two seasons at Mississippi State as a defensive analyst with former SDSU defensive coordinator Zach Arnett.
After graduating in 2011, Lindley helped coach numerous players leading up to the NFL Draft, including quarterbacks Carson Wentz, Jared Goff, Mitch Trubisky, CJ Beathard and Luke Falk.
Lindley and his wife, Lindsay, have a son, Caden.
The Aztecs (2-3, 0-1 MW) play host to Hawai'i at 7:30 p.m. PT Saturday at Snapdragon Stadium.