Auburn AD John Cohen considers DJ Durkin a worthy candidate in Auburn head coach search
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Auburn athletic director John Cohen is searching far and wide, gauging the interest of worthy candidates for the vacant head coaching job for Auburn football. One of the candidates he is considering is already on Auburn’s campus.
In a recent interview with Adam Cole of The Montgomery Advertiser, Cohen shared what he is looking for in Auburn’s next head coach and several of the challenges he is facing, as there are already over a dozen openings at the FBS level. One of the options he is looking at is interim head coach DJ Durkin. Durkin, who was a head coach at Maryland from 2016-18, is deemed worthy of an evaluation by Cohen.
“We’ve been watching (Durkin) coach for several years now, so I have a real familiarity with his style, with his energy, with his sense of discipline, his preparation,” Cohen said. “We feel very comfortable with DJ Durkin and his lineage, the great head coaches he’s worked for in the past. We think DJ is somebody who’s very worthy of consideration here.”
Several current Auburn players, including linebacker Xavier Atkins, have shared thoughts on removing the interim tag from Durkin’s title. A few commitments have also expressed their desire for Durkin to remain with the program. Cohen says that he is taking their opinions into consideration when searching for a new head coach.
“I’ve already met with a couple of Auburn football players on the roster,” Cohen said. “It’s been very revealing to me, and I’m really glad I did. … I think sometimes, as we get older, we make assumptions that student-athletes don’t know certain things, that they don’t know what’s going on. They’re extremely intuitive, and they have a heightened sense of awareness of what’s going on. So, their input is extremely valuable.”
Durkin is one of several candidates tied to the vacant Auburn job, joining Tulane head coach Jon Summral and USF head coach Alex Golesh. Cohen says he aims to name a head coach “within 24 hours after the Iron Bowl,” with postseason obligations possibly factoring into the decision-making process.
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This article originally appeared on Auburn Wire: Auburn AD names DJ Durkin a viable choice in head coaching search
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