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<p>Penn State&#8217;s assistant coach who received the most praise left on Saturday. Now one of the assistants who has taken the most heat is leaving as well.</p><p>For the second time in three days, an SEC school has hired a coach away from the Nittany Lions. Offensive line coach Herb Hand will join close friend Gus Malzahn at Auburn to coach the offensive line, the school announced Monday. USA Today first reported that Hand was on the move.</p><p>&#8220;My family and I are extremely excited to join the Auburn football family and be a part of a program with such great tradition and history,&#8221; Hand said in a statement. &#8220;We&#8217;re especially excited to rejoin Coach Malzahn and work with him again. It was an opportunity that was way too good for us to pass up.</p><p>&#8220;I want to thank Coach James Franklin and the Penn State football program for two great years and I wish them nothing but the best moving forward.&#8221;</p><p>Hand is the third Penn State assistant to leave in the last two months. Offensive coordinator John Donovan was fired at the end of November and defensive coordinator Bob Shoop left to take the same job at Tennessee on Saturday.</p><p>The Tigers just lost their own line coach, J.B. Grimes, to Cincinnati earlier on Monday. Hand has been in San Antonio at the annual American Football Coaches Association convention, where interviews typically occur.</p><p>Franklin acknowledged before the TaxSlayer Bowl against Georgia that he would likely be fending off interest in his staff through January.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not over,&#8221; Franklin said. &#8220;It won&#8217;t be over until probably after the convention and things like that for the most part.&#8221;</p><p>At Auburn, Hand will be reunited with Malzahn, the Tigers head coach who reached the national title game two years ago. The two were co-offensive coordinators at Tulsa in 2007 and 2008, when the Golden Hurricane were ranked No. 1 in the country in total offense.</p><p>The move leaves Franklin with two vacancies on his staff. Last month he hired Fordham head coach Joe Moorhead to run his offense. Now he needs an offensive line coach as well as someone to coach safeties, the position that Shoop worked with.</p><p>Brent Pry was promoted to replace Shoop as coordinator on Sunday and will still coach linebackers. Pry added associate head coach to his title while cornerbacks coach Terry Smith also got a bump, being named an assistant head coach.</p><p>Hand&#8217;s departure means that recent Lake-Lehman grad Connor McGovern will start his Penn State career with a new position coach. McGovern, a center, began classes in State College on Monday.</p><p>When Franklin was hired by Penn State, Hand did not follow him immediately, as he had interviewed for Franklin&#8217;s old job as the head coach at Vanderbilt. But the Commodores hired Stanford coordinator Derek Mason instead and Hand was introduced with the rest of Franklin&#8217;s initial staff at Penn State.</p><p>Hand inherited a unit that had just one junior or senior tackle and was dramatically short on depth in the wake of NCAA sanctions. The Lions moved two defensive tackles &#8212; Brian Gaia and Derek Dowrey &#8212; across the line to play guard to compensate, but the group struggled badly in 2014 and 2015.</p><p>Christian Hackenberg was sacked more than any quarterback in the nation in 2014 and it looked as though 2015 might be worse when Hackenberg went down 10 times in a season-opening loss to Temple.</p><p>The struggles in pass protection forced the Lions to abandon much of the offensive scheme they had installed during training camp in favor of a more conservative, run-based attack. Hand and Donovan received much of the scrutiny.</p><p>&#8220;When you walk into the locker room, all that you want as an offensive lineman is for your teammates to be able look at you and say, &#8216;We can count on this guy,&#8217; &#8221; Hand said in September. &#8220;And that&#8217;s what I want as a coach. I want the other guys on the staff to say, &#8216;I know that Herb&#8217;s got my back and he&#8217;s gonna do everything he can to help us be successful and he&#8217;s getting his guys ready.&#8217;</p><p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s the hardest thing, feeling like you let the organization down. That you let the team down. That you let your family down &#8212; because we&#8217;re a family here. That&#8217;s the toughest part.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Offensive line coach Herb Hand (left) is set to leave Penn State for Auburn to rejoin good friend Gus Malzahn. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/web1_herb-hand201611115181891-5.jpg</photo0><caption0>Offensive line coach Herb Hand (left) is set to leave Penn State for Auburn to rejoin good friend Gus Malzahn. </caption0><photoCredit0>Abby Drey | AP file photo, Centre Daily Times </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Derek Levarse</p><p>dlevarse@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Derek Levarse at 570-991-6396 or on Twitter @TLdlevarse</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Penn State offensive line coach Herb Hand hired by Auburn