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The school announced the hiring of Edsall on Wednesday. He replaces Bob Diaco, who was fired two days ago after winning 11 games in three seasons with the program. A news conference was scheduled for later Wednesday.

"We are excited to welcome Coach Edsall back the University of Connecticut," school President Susan Herbst said in a statement. "He possess the passion, experience and commitment to lead our program and develop our student-athletes, both on and off the field."

At UConn, Edsall went 74-70, led the program to five bowl appearances and helped oversee its transition to the Football Bowl Subdivision. Edsall left UConn for Maryland after the 2010 season in a less-than-amicable departure after the school's appearance in the Fiesta Bowl. He flew directly from the game to an interview with Maryland, and his players learned of his departure through the media.

Edsall remains the school's all-time winningest football coach.

After being fired by Maryland with a 22-34 record midway through his fifth season, Edsall has spent the past year as the Detroit Lions' director of football research and special projects.

He's close with Lions general manager Bob Quinn, considered Quinn a confidant when the latter worked as an equipment assistant at UConn and helped push Quinn to his first NFL job with the New England Patriots.

Detriot coach Jim Caldwell said Edsall's new job shouldn't impact the Lions. Last year, the Lions lost assistant offensive line coach Ryan Silverfield to Memphis, where he took an assistant coaching job, during the season.

"Just in terms of the overall, how we deal with it, we’ve certainly been there before so we’ve had some experience with guys that have taken college jobs in particular and then had to balance those things out between work here and there," Caldwell said. "So it kind of depends on each situation is a little bit different."

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Contributing: Dave Burkitt, Detroit Free Press