CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. – Southeast Missouri added five individuals to its football coaching staff Tuesday.
Brendan Boylan was hired as offensive coordinator, Will Heck was named run game coordinator and tight ends coach, George Sanders was hired as defensive secondary and cornerbacks coach, Curtis Akins joins the staff as outside linebackers coach and Cole Dobbins is the Redhawks director of recruiting & player personnel.
Boylan spent the last three years as pass game specialist, running backs and tight ends coach at Missouri. There, he collaborated directly with the Head Coach and Offensive Coordinator in weekly offensive game planning and managed in-game analytics, down and distance tendencies and coverage identification among other duties. Boylan also coached the wide receivers as a graduate assistant at Mizzou. Prior to that, he was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Notre Dame College University and made other coaching stops at Mercyhurst University and Midwestern State. Boylan played quarterback and was his team's placeholder at Mercyhurst, where he set 17 school records, including nine single-season marks.
A native of Corvallis, Oregon, Heck was the tight ends coach at Oregon State in 2025 and worked the 2024 season in an offensive quality control position for the Beavers. He came back to his hometown after spending two seasons as the offensive line coach at his alma mater, Linfield. Heck was an offensive quality control coach and offensive graduate assistant at California for four seasons. That stint came after his initial role as assistant offensive line coach and recruiting coordinator at Linfield. Heck was a three-year letterwinner and member of four consecutive Northwest Conference championship teams at Linfield. A team captain, he started at guard and center during his career.
Sanders comes to Cape Girardeau from the University of Incarnate Word, where he was pass game coordinator and defensive backs coach for three years. Before that, he was cornerbacks coach for three seasons at Pittsburg State University. Sanders was a defensive graduate assistant at both Incarnate Word and Northeastern State University. He was a standout player at Southwest Baptist University from 2012-16, helping lead the Bearcats to their first Great Lakes Valley Conference title and NCAA Division II playoff berth in program history as a senior.
Akins oversaw defensive quality control for the 2024 and 2025 seasons at Memphis. He played linebacker for the Tigers for four years, graduating in 2018 and finishing his college career with 276 tackles. Akins went on to play in the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals before starting his coaching career at East Central Community College and then the University of Arkansas-Monticello.
Dobbins was the University of Alabama's recruiting specialist for four years from 2022-25. He primarily assisted Assistant Head Coach and Running Backs Coach Robert Gillespie in that position. Dobbins was responsible for reviewing high school recruit profiles, analyzing and cutting film for recruit and transfer player files and monitoring transfer portal and reporting on new prospects among other duties. He also worked as a film evaluation coach at Next Play and a Prep Redzone Texas scout at Prep Network before his job at Alabama.
