It would be understandable if Jordan McNair's friends or family got into a fight with anyone who gave D.J. Durkin a job in football.
The University of Maryland fired its former head coach due to his program being so bad that it was found to be responsible for the death of a player, as the training staff misdiagnosed his symptoms after he passed out during a taxing workout.
Texas A&M is hiring Durkin to be their new defensive coach. Durkin is Teflon. There are a few things that were allowed to happen inside the program at Maryland.
Rick Court, a former strength and conditioning coach, once put the lat bar into a player's neck and choked him.
The team was made to watch videos that were upsetting. The videos had serial killers, drills entering eyeballs, and bloody scenes with animals eating animals. It was thought to be a motivator.
The court humiliated their teammates by throwing food, weights, and even a trash can full of vomit at them.
You would think that he was a black sheep in the coaching world. The combination of his whiteness and the occasional toxic culture of football has prevented that from being the case. The Atlanta Falcons hired Durkin to be a guest coach during training camp in 2019.
The death of McNair was an unfortunate situation.
When asked if he was hesitant about the decision, he said that he knew who the person had coached before. I knew he was a defensive coach and a special teams coach. We have to do our due diligence from there. An unfortunate situation, but as far as eyes to look at the defense to help us, I definitely knew the advantage of that.
The move should have been expected from the man since one of his coaches once asked Eli Apple his sexual preference during an interview.
When Lane Kiffin was looking for a defensive coach at Ole Miss, he found a man with previous experience in Florida, who had returned to the SEC.
The Ole Miss defense ranked 97th in the country, but they had the eighth-best defense in the SEC. It isn't like Durkin is a defensive wizard who can instantly turn a program around. He is just a white dude that did something really bad that other white dudes have no problem ignoring because the people he hurt don't look like them.
Don't be surprised if D.J. Durkin runs his own program again soon.
