ANNAPOLIS, Md.—Navy head football coach Ken Niumatalolo announced Thursday that he has added Chuck Petersen and Ryan Crawford to the coaching staff.  Petersen will serve as the offensive assistant, while Crawford will coach the safeties.
 
Additionally, Niumatalolo announced that Jerrick Hall will add defensive ends to his responsibilities and will now coach the entire defensive line, Joe Coniglio moves from defensive assistant to coach the strikers and the raiders, Va'a Niumatalolo moves from offensive assistant to defensive analyst and assistant director of football operations and defensive coordinator Brian Newberry will not coach a specific position, which will free him up to oversee the entire defense.
 
"We are very excited to welcome Coach Chuck Petersen and Coach Ryan Crawford to the Brotherhood," said Niumatalolo.  "We feel like we have hit home runs with both of them.  Coach Petersen is one of the elite option minds in the history of college football and brings to Annapolis a wealth of knowledge, particularly when it comes to Service Academy football.  Coach Crawford has coached at the highest level in the ACC.  He has extensive experience of recruiting quality student-athletes at Harvard and Wake Forest.  Most importantly, they are both men of Integrity and impeccable character.  They will develop young men of character and leadership – which is the vision of Navy Football."
 
Petersen was an assistant at the Air Force Academy for 17 years coaching the running backs (1990), wide receivers (1991-96) and quarterbacks/fullbacks (1997-06).  He was the primary play caller at Air Force from 1997-06 and served as the offensive coordinator from 2000-06.
 
Petersen won 12 Commander-In-Chief's Trophies, went to nine bowl games, won three conference championships and owned a 16-2 record against Army while an assistant at Air Force.
 
Since leaving Air Force, Petersen has served as the safeties coach at North Texas from 2007-10 and was the head coach at Orange Lutheran High School in Orange, Calif. from 2012-16 and at Hyde Park High School in Austin, Texas from 2017-21.
 
Petersen is a 1985 graduate of the Air Force Academy where he was a four-year letterwinner at cornerback and served as a team captain his senior year.  As a player, Petersen won the first two Commander-In-Chief's Trophies in school history and helped lead Air Force to its first two bowl wins in school history (Vanderbilt in the 1982 Hall of Fame Bowl and Ole Miss in the 1983 Independence Bowl). He was 3-1 against Army and was a member of two Air Force teams that beat Notre Dame.
 
Petersen served seven years active duty in the United States Air Force and was honorably discharged as a Captain.  He served in the Air Force Space Command at Eglin Air Force Base in Ft. Walton Beach, Fla. and was a Space Operations Crew Commander and Director of Standardization and Evaluation.
 
Petersen and his wife Roya have three children: Chase, Brady and Natalie. Brady is a 2019 graduate of the Naval Academy and played football for four years.  His nephew is current Navy kicker Bijan Nichols.
 
Crawford comes to Navy from Wake Forest where he spent the past four years coaching in the secondary and served as the assistant special teams coordinator for the past two years.
 
In his four years in Winston-Salem, Wake Forest compiled a record of 30-19 and went to four bowl games.  In 2021, Wake Forest finished 11-3 and was ranked as high as 10^th in the nation.
 
In 2020, Wake Forest was one of seven FBS schools with a turnover margin of at least +10 and it was one of five schools in the country to post back-to-back seasons with at least 13 interceptions.
 
In his first year working with the special teams in 2020, the Demon Deacons returned a kickoff for a touchdown for the first time since 2003 and Donovan Greene finished fourth in the country in kickoff return average (34.0 yards per return).

Prior to making the move to Winston-Salem, Crawford spent six seasons as the secondary coach and special teams coordinator at Harvard. During that time, the Crimson were regularly ranked in the top 10 in scoring defense and total defense in the FCS, while Justice Shelton-Mosely led the FCS with an average of 18.8 yard per punt return while also leading the FCS with a pair of touchdown returns in 2017. 

Before moving to the Ivy League, Crawford had multi-year stops at Rhode Island, Bucknell and his alma mater Davidson. In his final season at Rhode Island, Crawford was promoted to defensive coordinator.

A 2001 graduate of Davidson, Crawford earned a bachelor's degree in biology while playing defensive back and was named the school's male athlete of the year in 2000. He led the FCS with eight interceptions his junior season, while earning First-Team All-America honors. He was also named the FCS Mid-Major Defensive Back of the Year. He was inducted into the Davidson Hall of Fame in 2012.

Crawford went on to play professionally with the Indiana Firebirds of the Arena Football League and the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League.

Crawford and his wife, Carrie, have a daughter, Dylan, and son, Bryson.