Zac Roper

Zac Roper is an American football coach. He is the current offensive coordinator at Duke University. Prior to this, Roper had spent the majority of his career as a special teams coordinator. He worked with staffs at Ole Miss, Oklahoma, and Cornell before joining the Duke staff for the 2008 season.

Oklahoma

Zac Roper started his college coaching career as a student assistant for the Oklahoma Sooners football team from 1996-1998, before transferring to Ole Miss.

Ole Miss

Roper served as a student assistant, an administrative graduate assistant, and a graduate assistant coach at Ole Miss from 2001 through 2004. Here, he first worked for current Duke head coach, David Cutcliffe. While working as a graduate assistant coach, Roper worked with the wide receivers, tight ends, and placekickers. In 2003, Jonathan Nichols won the Lou Groza Award as the nation’s top kicker.

Cornell

Following his time at Ole Miss, Roper joined the staff at Cornell as the special teams coordinator. In addition to special teams, Roper coached the running backs and tight ends in his first two seasons with the Big Red, 2005 and 2006. During his third and final year at Cornell, Roper switched to the defensive side of the ball, and coached the cornerbacks.

Duke

In 2008, Roper rejoined David Cutcliffe at Duke. He joined the staff as the special teams coordinator and running backs coach. 2008 was also the first year for Roper’s brother, Kurt Roper, serving as the offensive coordinator for the Blue Devils. In 2013, the staffed was restructured and Roper moved from coaching the running backs, to coaching the tight ends, while continuing his special teams duties.

When Scottie Montgomery left Duke to become the head coach at East Carolina prior to the 2016 season, Roper was promoted to offensive coordinator and took over coaching the quarterbacks.

Coaching Tree

Head coaches that Zac Roper has worked under:

• John Blake: Oklahoma (1996-1998)
• David Cutcliffe: Ole Miss (2001-2004), Duke (2008-present)
• Jim Knowles: Cornell (2005-2007)

Roper and his wife, Rebecca (Harvey), have two children, Joshua and Mikayla.