Elijah Sandweiss Joins the Tiger-Cats Defensive Staff to Coach Linebackers
It is natural for CFL fans and teams to focus on the process each team goes through to build their 2025 rosters. CFL free agency and the CFL draft can be catalysts for CFL teams to either boost or doom themselves heading into the new CFL season. Despite those roster-building activities, it is just as important for teams to build their coaching staff so that the leadership needed to create a winning culture is present.
Near the start of the new year, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats announced that former Calgary Stampeders Defensive Coordinator Brent Monson would be the new Defensive Coordinator for the Tiger-Cats for 2025. When coaches change in a particular dimension of a CFL team, there is usually a wave of other coaching additions as the new coach establishes his staff. Up to this point, the Tiger-Cats have not announced any other additions to their coaching staff. Still, earlier today, several CFL fans noticed that on the X account of Elijah Sandweiss, he is the new Linebackers position coach for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
Sandweiss comes to the CFL with a wealth of coaching experience on the defensive side of football at the NCAA Power 4 conference level. To begin his coaching development journey, Sandweiss spent six seasons as a recruiting intern for Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown. While working for Brown, Sandweiss worked himself in a defensive quality control position for the Wolverines.
In 2020, Sandweiss took a defensive Graduate Assistant position at the University of Texas, where he coached the Jack linebackers for the Longhorns. The next step in Sandweiss’s coaching journey took him to a Defensive Assistant Coach position, where he served as the Assistant Linebackers Coach at the University of Mississippi in 2021. Sandweiss then moved to take a Defensive Analyst and Assistant Linebackers coach position at Texas A&M in 2023.
Before joining the Hamilton Tiger-Cats coaching staff, Sandweiss most recently held the position of Defensive Analyst and Jack Linebackers Coach at Mississippi State University. Much of Sandweiss’s coaching experiences are at the highest levels of college football in the Big 10 and SEC conferences. Transitioning to the CFL will be Sandweiss’s next step in his development as a professional coach and allow him to show his dexterity in diverse situations.
Follow me on X: @AaronSauter7
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