Auburn made a big splash in the college football world on Monday when it was announced they had agreed to a new deal with defensive coordinator DJ Durkin, per Adam Cole of the Montgomery Advertiser.
Durkin’s new deal includes an added year with the Tigers through 2027 and a salary bump to $2.5 million in 2025. Durkin will be making over double what he did in 2024 and is now the second highest paid assistant coach in college football.
The one man he sits behind is recently signed defensive coordinator Jim Knowles who agreed to a $3.1 million per year deal with Penn State after helping Ohio State win a national championship.
With how big of a raise Durkin got and the quality of coach he has been, I would argue that Knowles departure from Ohio State and new deal has something to do with this.
Now I certainly will not speak for everyone, but when I think of the top assistant coaches/coordinators in college football, DJ Durkin is not one of the first to come to mind. Durkin has been coaching at the college level for over 20 years serving as a position coach and DC at high level programs such as Michigan, Florida, and Texas A&M along with a short stint as head coach at Maryland.
There is no question that he is a high level defensive mind as he led Florida to consecutive top-15 defenses in 2013-2014 and had an impressive year with Michigan leading the fourth ranked defense in the country and posting three consecutive shutouts. Since then though what has DJ Durkin done?
In 2020 at Ole Miss he was co-DC of the 126th ranked defense in yards/per game followed by 97th in 2021. He then became DC at Texas A&M where his defense ranked 25th and 36th in points per game during the 2022 and 2023 seasons. While this is a big improvement from his days with Ole Miss, those Aggie teams were loaded with talent and had a combined record of 12-13 during Durkin’s time as DC.
This now takes us to last year where Durkin was with Auburn who just gave him this new deal. In 2024 the Tigers finished 5-7 and ranked 31st in total defense (9th in SEC), 75th in opponent 3rd down conversion %, 31st in red zone defense, and 35th in points per game. These numbers are good but not great, and in my eyes not good enough for Durkin to receive this massive pay raise and be the second highest paid assistant in the sport.
This leaves me to believe that this deal has more to do with Jim Knowles than DJ Durkin, and two possible options as to why.
- Option 1: Ohio State was looking to hire Durkin after Knowles left while Hugh Freeze really wanted to keep him as part of Auburn’s staff. So Auburn had to match or exceed OSU’s offer.
- Option 2: Durkin pointed to Knowles massive deal which possibly reset the market for college assistant coaches and led him to go after a new deal.
No matter what caused this deal to happen, you cannot hate a guy for getting more money, this time it just left me scratching my head a little. DJ Durkin deserves whatever Auburn is willing to pay him, even if Jim Knowles may have had an effect on that number.