Northside football hires Langston Hughes’ Daniel Williams for vacant head coach position

The spiral of Northside football is hopefully coming to an end with Mark Jones announcing the hire of Daniel Williams from Langston Hughes to take over as head coach.

Northside, a storied football program and one of the winningest in Georgia’s history, has had two straight years of losing seasons and four in total since 2019-20. Before that the last time the Eagles finished under .500 was 1991 when they went 3-7. Before that was 1970 when they went 2-7-1.

Northside fans, players and coaches are not used to leaving McConnell-Talbert Stadium losers, and Williams did very little of that in Fairburn.

Outside of his first season in 2019-20 where the Panthers went 2-8, Williams has seen three championship games, winning one in 2022 against Gainesville.

If Langston Hughes looks familiar it’s because Williams’ teams have knocked the Eagles out of the playoffs twice in back-to-back years: In 2020 in the first round 27-0 and in 2021 48-7 in the second round.

The Panthers have also been in the same classification as the Eagles, though Langston Hughes was in 6A in 2012, four years before Northside (2016).