In coaching circles, he's very well respected...by people who also coach football for a living at a high level. And he's also made Holy Cross a perennial playoff team, when they'd only made the playoffs twice prior to his arrival. As a gameday coach, and from a player development standpoint, he has proven chops and I think could be a good, possibly great, hire.
My biggest concern with him is that literally his entire career, even as an assistant, has been at Catholic schools. Those saying he has solid, long term roots in northeast recruiting are right, but it's not the type of feeder schools SU would likely ever recruit from. The private Catholic universities have feeder high schools in the northeast parochial schools, which is where Chesney is getting a lot of his talent. Those schools don't have very many FBS prospects at all. The ones they do have go to either 1) ND or 2) BC. He'd have to build a new recruiting network.
I also wonder if he likes being in the Catholic school ecosystem. Based on how well thought of he is, I have to believe he's gotten some MAC or other G5 HC offers over the past few years, yet he's still at Holy Cross.
We could do much worse, but the risk/reward profile is really out there. It's a real leap of faith to think he can make the jump to navigating NIL, the portal, and recruiting ACC level talent based on Patriot league experience. Not to mention he has no built in network of P5 level staff he's worked with, ad he'd have to put an ACC staff together pretty quickly. I do think he could develop and scheme the best out of whatever talent he brought here, though.
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