Tony Gibson generated a five-win season in his debut campaign at the Marshall Thundering Herd, just missing a postseason-bowl bid with a narrow season-ending loss.
Since that time, Gibson's added Alex Jones from Arkansas State as the program's new general manager and worked to revamp the Thundering Herd's defensive staff along the way.
Saturday, Gibson nailed down a critical hire, sources told FootballScoop.
Brad Lambert, a veteran of college coaching with Power Conference coordinator experience, is finalizing a deal to become Marshall's next defensive coordinator, multiple sources told FootballScoop.
It's a reunion for Lambert, who previously coordinated defenses at Marshall for Doc Holliday in 2019-20.
The return of Lambert to Huntington, West Virginia, coincides with the exits of outgoing defensive coordinator Shannon Morrison and the in-season departure of Jake Elsworth, who helped coach the Herd's Linebackers.
Lambert has yet an additional Marshal tie from the earliest days of his coaching career. The former Kansas State player logged two years as a graduate assistant at Oklahoma before he joined Jim Donnan's Marshall juggernaut from 1990-95. Lambert then also coached under Donnan in the SEC at the University of Georgia.
Lambert's had a handful of Power Conference coordinator jobs, the first of which was when he helmed the Wake Forest Demon Deacons defense for Jim Grobe from 2008-10.
Additionally, Lambert returned to Wake Forest and oversaw the defense earlier this decade for Dave Clawson in the final three years of Clawson's program-record setting tenure. In 2021, Lambert served as defensive coordinator for Jeff Brohm at Purdue.
This past year, Lambert has been a senior defensive analyst at the University of Kentucky.
Gibson's inaugural Herd squad featured five players selected either first- or second-team All-Sun Belt Conference.
The Herd had a pivotal three-wins-in-four-games stretch in October during which it notched a blowout-win against Ole Dominion, outlasted preseason conference-title contender Texas State and then also won by two touchdowns on the road at Georgia State.
Marshall also played eventual SBC Champion James Madison with a dozen points before falling in that contest to the nation's No. 12 seed in the upcoming College Football Playoff.
In 2026, the Thundering Herd open with a tricky stretch of road games in Weeks 1 and 3 sandwiched around a home game against Derek Mason's struggling MTSU program, which last week fired its offensive coordinator.
Marshall marks the debut opponent for the Matt Campbell era at Penn State when the Herd visits Happy Valley, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 5; the Week 3 game is at Missouri State, which also will feature a new coach following Ryan Beard's departure to Sun Belt resident Coastal Carolina.