HARRISONBURG — It was the offseason, and Jamal Powell was left in limbo.

The man who hired him — Everett Withers — had left and Powell didn’t know if he still had a job on James Madison’s football staff.

Withers accepted the job as head coach at Texas State, and unlike a few Madison assistants, Powell wasn’t following Withers to San Marcos.

Powell, who joined Withers’ staff as the offensive line coach for the 2015 season, wanted to stay in Harrisonburg.

“You just don’t know what’s going to happen,” Powell said.

For about a month between the time Withers left in early January until new coach Mike Houston announced Powell would be retained before National Signing Day in February, the former Texas Christian University offensive lineman said he leaned on his family and faith while waiting for a decision on his future.

Despite not knowing if he’d have a place on the Bridgeforth Stadium sideline in the fall, he kept working. Powell accompanied Houston on recruiting trips to ensure the 2016 class would stay intact.

“I got to talk a lot with Coach Houston at that time, and I’m sure he was trying to find out about me,” Powell said.

Houston said when he first arrived at JMU, he had no intention of keeping any of Withers’ assistants around.

“Holdover coaches usually don’t work out because they were part of someone else’s staff and usually have different philosophies and ideas about the way things should be done,” Houston said. “I’ve painfully learned that lesson in the past.”

But after two weeks of long car rides with Powell to visit with committed prospects, Houston’s mind was changed.

“I remember standing in [freshman quarterback] Cole Johnson’s living room and just seeing the relationship he had with Cole and Cole’s parents,” Houston said. “You’ve got an offensive line coach that’s built a relationship with a quarterback and it stuck out to me. It did.”

Add in the rave reviews Houston heard from different Madison offensive linemen, like one he said he can still remember from junior left tackle Aaron Stinnie, it became a no-brainer to keep Powell in place.

“Coach Houston called me one night and said, ‘Jamal, I’m going to retain you.’ I was ecstatic,” Powell said.

Powell’s next moves were easy. He told his wife and then called to tell the players who vouched for him the good news.

For the three redshirt seniors — right guard Matt Frank, right tackle Mitchell Kirsch and center Kyle Rigney — it was the first time in their careers they would have the same position coach for a second straight season.

Under Powell’s watch, the JMU offensive line has paved the way for the nation’s second best scoring offense and fourth best rushing offense this fall. The group didn’t yield a single sack in the month of October either, allowing quarterback Bryan Schor to throw for 964 yards and 10 touchdowns over four games while being named Colonial Athletic Association Offensive Player of the Week three times.

“You look down the line and start it off with Coach [Chris] Malone recruiting us in, then Coach [Curt] Newsome, Coach [Brad] Davis and finally Coach Powell, and we’re doing pretty well with him,” Frank said. “There’s a reason for that.”

Frank said Powell was able to bridge the gap between Withers’ staff and Houston’s coaches. He adopted Houston’s philosophy without changing the terminology too drastically for the offensive linemen.

“It seems like it has worked out perfectly,” Frank said. “He was good with the old staff and great with this staff, and for someone like myself, I can see the difference. And you know it is true because you’ve had different staffs. I think Coach Powell is a perfect fit and we’re lucky he’s still here.”

Powell said it wasn’t tough for him to move from the finesse approach Withers wanted to the straight-ahead tactic Houston demanded.

“We were really downhill at TCU,” Powell said. “I played with LaDainian Tomlinson and some other really good running backs and offensive linemen. We were all about hitting someone in the mouth for four quarters and making them tap out, which is what we’re doing now.”

Between his time at TCU, playing two seasons for Dennis Franchione and three seasons for Gary Patterson and a stop at Texas A&M, where Franchione hired him as a graduate assistant, Powell said he saw how good coaches connect and interact with their players.

He said Franchione, Patterson, his late offensive line coach Jim Bob Helduser, and his second offensive line coach at TCU, Eddie Williamson, made a big impact on his career.

“There are so many coaches that have influenced me, but they gave me nuggets that I still use today,” Powell said. “When Coach Fran brought me in as a GA at A&M, I got to work for a lot of coaches that I had the opportunity to play for. They taught me what it meant to be a coach, to hold players accountable and then also be there for them when they need you.”

Whether he’s in the meeting room showing his linemen something on film or motivating his players while they have to push a sled during practice, or sketching the opposing defense on a white board during a game, Powell carries those lessons with him everywhere.

And it’s helped JMU’s offensive line grow into what it is now.

“I think the biggest thing is our communication,” Frank said. “We’re willing to talk to each other about anything. Once you get on the field, it’s easy to talk about the blitz that we see coming and how we want to make a block. If you’re able to talk to a guy about anything it’s even easier to talk to him on the field.

“And you have to give Coach Powell the credit for that. He makes it so it’s important that we know what everyone is doing on every play, so we really can work as one out there.”