Football
- Title:
- Recruiting Coordinator/Cornerbacks
- Email:
- mroberts@liberty.edu
- Start Date:
- 03/01/2022
Former Liberty Football assistant coach Marshall Roberts returned to Liberty Mountain March 2022 and is now aiding Flames Nation’s continued growth through his new position with the Flames Letterwinners Association.
Roberts, who spent the 2004-18 seasons on Liberty’s football coaching staff, serves the athletics department as the Assistant AD and Director of Letterwinners Engagement.
In this new role, Roberts will dedicate his time to engaging former Liberty student-athletes through the Letterwinners Association. Launched in the summer of 2019, the Letterwinners Association exists to serve and engage former student-athletes.
Roberts was senior veteran on Liberty’s coaching staff, having served under three different head football coaches. He brought an array of knowledge to Liberty Mountain, having previously worked with football programs from the NFL, NFL Europe, Canadian Football League, Arena Football League, collegiate, and high school ranks.
During his decade-plus years of coaching at Liberty, Roberts helped the Flames win eight Big South titles (2007-10, 2012-14, 2016) and secure their first-ever NCAA FCS Playoffs win in 2014.
Robert served in a variety of roles on Liberty’s football coaching staff, including recruiting coordinator, special teams coordinator, defensive backs coach and cornerbacks coach.
While leading Liberty’s special teams units, Roberts had two players earn All-America honors. In 2011, two-time All-America kicker Matt Bevins left the program as Liberty’s all-time leading scorer with 309 points, in addition to his career records for most field goals (58) and most field goal attempts (77). In 2011, Roberts instructed another All-America special teams player, Kevin Fogg, who led the country with three kickoff returns for touchdowns and averaged 33.5 yards per kickoff return.
During Roberts’ time with the Flames, Liberty’s defense ranked in the top 20 in the country multiple times, including No. 12 in scoring defense in 2006 and No. 5 in 2013. Roberts’ defenders played a vital role in Liberty’s record-setting 10-2 campaign in 2008, helping the Flames finish the season ranked No. 14 nationally in the final polls.
Individually, Roberts had an impact on several of his players, with 17 defensive backs taking home Big South all-conference honors under his tutelage.
Roberts helped Liberty kicked off its two-year FBS transition process in grand style when the Flames posted a 48-45 win at Baylor on Sept. 2, 2017. The stunning victory was ranked as the seventh biggest upset in college football over the previous 25 years in an article on ESPN.com (Sept. 6, 2017).
Roberts is a 1993 graduate of Rutgers, where he was a four-year letter-winner under former Flames Defensive Coordinator Steve Carson. The four-year starter at cornerback and punt returner finished as Rutgers’ all-time leader in career punt returns with 1,018 yards and 91 returns (averaging 11.1 yards per return).
He was an All-ECAC, East, and AP corner and return specialist in 1991 and was named to the 1992 BIG EAST preseason all-conference team while finishing the season ranked 12th in the country in punt returns.
Roberts played professionally in the Arena Football League (AFL) for four years and another year with the Canadian Football League (CFL). He played for the CFL’s Sacramento Gold Miners as a defensive back and punt returner in 1993. He then played with the AFL’s Orlando Predators in 1994 and 1995 as a defensive/return specialist. Additionally, Roberts spent the 1996 season with the Albany Firebirds as a defensive specialist. He then coached the receivers and defensive backs with the Anaheim Piranhas in 1997.
Roberts served as a graduate assistant for the East Stroudsburg Warriors and was responsible for the secondary in 1998. In 1999, Roberts served as the head football coach at Abington High School in Abington, Pa., while overseeing the defense, special teams, and the passing game.
Roberts served as a coaching intern for the Pittsburgh Steelers for two months during the summer of 2002 and the secondary coach with NFL Europe’s Frankfurt Galaxy during the 2002 season.
Roberts came to Liberty from East Stroudsburg University, where he served as the secondary coach/special teams coordinator from 2000-03. He helped guide the Warriors to back-to-back Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference East Division titles in 2002 and 2003.
Following his last season with the Flames in 2018, Roberts served on the coaching staff at VMI for three seasons (2019-21) as defensive backs coach/pass game coordinator.
Roberts developed the 2020-21 secondary into a championship level unit highlighted by first team All-SoCon defensive back A.J. Smith.
Roberts supervised a 2019 VMI secondary that achieved No. 2 spot in SoCon red zone defense and third most interceptions (10) in the league.
Robert helped VMI post a 6-2 record during the 2020 spring football season, which included the Keydets’ first SoCon title since 1977 and the program’s first-ever automatic bid to the FCS Playoffs.
The Keydets finished the 2020 and 2021 campaigns each with a winning record, its first back-to-back seasons with a win mark since 1961.
