When you’ve been in the profession as long as Urban Meyer, the branches on the coaching tree get rather long.
As a result, there comes a point in time — or two — every season when Meyer runs into a team led by someone who used to work for him. When you’re as successful as Meyer, assistants move on and become head coaches elsewhere. It’s just the nature of the job.
It happened five weeks ago when Ohio State hosted Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights are in their first year under Chris Ash, who worked for Meyer for two years as the Buckeyes’ co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach.
On Saturday, when Ohio State travels to Maryland, Meyer will see another familiar face on the opposing sideline in DJ Durkin, who is now in his first season as the Terrapins’ head coach. Durkin worked for Meyer at both Bowling Green and Florida, as a defensive graduate assistant for the Falcons and as the linebackers coach and special teams coordinator with the Gators.
“I’m very close with him and I love him to death,” Meyer said of Durkin on Monday. “I love his family. He’s from Youngstown. He’s a great guy, great football coach.”
The Terps currently sit at 5-4 in Durkin’s first season at the helm, one win away from bowl eligibility with three games remaining on the schedule. That’s quite an improvement from last year’s Maryland team which went 3-9 under Randy Edsall.
DJ Durkin as a graduate assistant under Urban Meyer at Bowling Green.
The turnaround is hardly surprising to Meyer, who said Tuesday on the Big Ten coaches teleconference he saw something in Durkin very early on in their days together at Bowling Green.
“No doubt,” Meyer said. “I immediately gave him full-time responsibility after the first few weeks we were together. I left to go to Utah, but I had plans to hire him full time immediately after that first year."
“That’s how good he was.”
Durkin has learned from some of the sport’s best and he’s one of the rare coaches who worked under both Meyer and Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh. Prior to taking the job at Maryland, Durkin was the defensive coordinator for the Wolverines under Harbaugh and he spent time with him at Stanford, as well.
It was Meyer who gave Durkin his first shot at coaching, though, and that’s something Durkin remembers fondly.
“It was a very valuable experience,” Durkin said. “It was obviously my first experience as a coach, my first job. It was hard work, it was very enjoyable and I learned a lot from it. A lot of the things I learned back then are still things that are a major part of my philosophy and what I believe in today.”
The first time Meyer and Durkin shook hands was 15 years ago when Meyer hired the recently graduated Durkin to his staff as a GA at Bowling Green. They’ll shake hands again prior to Saturday's game, both as head coaches, as their teams play each other for the very first time.
“We’re all professionals and he’s the ultimate professional so we just coach our teams and move on,” Meyer said. “But I’m very proud of DJ and I see the trademarks of our program — play hard, toughness and guys giving everything they can. I’m very proud of him.”
