Before he was Michigan's defensive coordinator and long before he became Maryland's head football coach last winter, DJ Durkin spent much of his career coaching special teams. While holding defensive coaching roles, too, Durkin spent three years apiece as a special teams coordinator at Stanford and then Florida. Before that, a year at Bowling Green.
It's a big part of Durkin's background, and it's been a big part of Durkin's approach since taking the Maryland job in December. He made Ball State head coach Pete Lembo one of the higher-profile special teams coordinator hires of all time, and his second Maryland commitment was Australian punter Wade Lees.