Jamael Lett enters his second season as the special teams coordinator and defensive assistant with the University of South Alabama football program.
Last season he coached Diego Guajardo who finished the season with 69 points on 12-of-17 field goals and 33-fo-35 extra point attempts. He also recorded 23 touchbacks on 59 kickoffs.
Lett — who originally hails from Mobile — has coached at the collegiate level for the last seven seasons including serving as the secondary coach at Akron last fall.
He also worked with the secondary at Samford from 2017-19, helping the Bulldogs go 8-4 overall and 6-2 in the Southern Conference his first year on the staff as they qualified for the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs after defeating three top-25 teams during the campaign. Â His efforts also helped Samford post a winning record the following fall after earning victories over No. 8 Wofford and 17th-ranked East Tennessee State.
While he was a graduate assistant working with the defensive line at Ohio in 2016, Lett helped Tarell Basham become the Mid-American Conference Defensive Player of the Year as the Bobcats won the league’s East Division title with a 6-2 mark.  They would finish 8-6 after earning a berth in the conference championship game as well as receiving an invitation to play in the Dollar General Bowl.
He was an assistant at Tennessee-Martin during the 2015 season as the Skyhawks went 7-4 overall and 6-2 in the Ohio Valley Conference, with his efforts guiding a secondary — featuring all-league selection Marquis Clemons — that recorded six interceptions and 30 additional passes broken up.
Lett has also served as an assistant coach at Davidson (Ala.) High, where two of his players would go on to compete at the NCAA Division I level, and Brainerd (Tenn.) H.S.
A four-year letterwinner in the secondary at Samford, he received his undergraduate degree in sports medicine from the school in 2011 before going on to add a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Tennessee Tech the following year.  In 2019, Lett was selected to take part in the in the NCAA-NFL Coaches Academy.
He and his wife Julia have two children, son David (4) and daughter Madison (3).
The Lett File
Born: March 11, 1988, in Fairfield, Calif.
Education:
Samford ’11, bachelor’s degree in sports medicine
Tennessee Tech ’12, master’s degree in curriculum and instruction
Collegiate Playing Experience:
Four years, defensive back
Coaching Experience:
Brainerd (Tenn.) High — assistant coach, 2013
Davidson (Ala.) High — assistant coach, 2014
Tennessee-Martin — assistant coach, 2015
Ohio — graduate assistant coach, 2016
Samford— assistant coach, 2017-19
Akron — assistant coach, 2020
South Alabama — assistant coach, 2021-
Family: Wife, Julia; One son, David (4) and one daughter, Madison (3)
