Zac Roper

Zac Roper (born April 29, 1978) is an American football coach. He is currently the special teams coordinator and tight ends coach at Florida International University, and was previously the 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.

Coaching career Oklahoma 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.

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. After the 2019 season in which Duke's offense was second to last in the league with 329.7 yards per game, Cutcliffe took play-calling duties from Roper. Following another sub-par offensive season, and a 2-9 record in 2020, Roper lost his offensive coordinator title, and switched from coaching quarterbacks to tight ends.

North Carolina State Following Cutcliffe's retirement after the 2021 season, Roper wasn't retained by new head coach Mike Elko. Instead, he joined Dave Doeren's staff at North Carolina State as an offensive analyst for the 2022 season.

FIU After one season at NC State, Roper returned to an on the field coaching position when he joined Mike MacIntyre's staff at FIU as the special teams coordinator and tight ends coach. His brother Kurt is currently the running backs coach at NC State.