Does Texas A&M Football have a DJ Durkin Problem?
Does Texas A&M football have an issue in the form of their defensive coordinator?
Seems like a few people think so.
One of the highest-paid assistant coaches in the country has not had a good defense in almost a decade.
— Carter Karels (@CarterKarels) September 14, 2023
A deep dive on DJ Durkin, his time with the Aggies and how all of his defenses since 2016 have been bad in almost every measurable way. https://t.co/HHI6HJPK48
I like some of the stuff Carter does. But he’s wrong here.
Many of the statistics used in this article are rather misleading—or, at least, less helpful than the article would have you believe. Let me describe what I mean.
Carter begins his main point with this claim:
"“Since 2016… Durkin has not coached an adequate college defense. As the head coach at Maryland (2016-18) and coordinator at Ole Miss (2020-21) and A&M (2022-present), Durkin has coached defenses that ranked below average at best in almost every major category.”"
He mentions that 2018 was not counted in the numbers he will use, since it was Durkin’s last season at Maryland, wherein he was placed on administrative leave and then fired midseason.
Here is my main issue. If you make the claim that Durkin has not coached an adequate college defense since 2016, then you have to prove that. A red flag here is that last year’s defense for Texas A&M football finished the season as the 18th-ranked defense in the nation per SP+, with a rating of 15.6. For context, that is the second-best rating the Aggie defense has had since SP+ came around in 2005. The only defense that was better was Elko’s in 2021, which finished with a 14.9 rating (7th in the nation).
SP+ is a respected measure of team and unit quality. According to that measure, the defense for Texas A&M football was not only adequate, but great last year. And this, I’ll remind you, is even including the metrics from the Florida game where the defense was missing half its starters and gave the Gators pretty much anything they wanted.
In 2021 at Ole Miss, he finished with the 36th ranked defense in the nation. That’s middle of the pack even if you’re only considering Power 5 teams, so that exceeds the adequate mark. In 2020, his first year with the Rebels, he had the 80th ranked unit—the first truly below-average mark we’ve seen here. That’s two out of three years—and, it’s worth noting, the two most recent years—that Durkin has exceeded the mark that Karels laid out.