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What I like about the Duane Akina hire: Stability for a stable of DBU talent

Eric Nahlinby:Eric Nahlin•about 9 hours
Duane Akina
Duane Akina (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

Until Terry Joseph departed Texas for his hometown New Orleans Saints, I couldn’t have imagined possessing these thoughts. Duane Akina‘s name came up recently when it was originally believed Texas was looking for a safeties coach to replace Blake Gideon, and I laughed it off. But context is key.

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Akina isn’t replacing Gideon; he’s replacing Joseph, who replaced Gideon. Mark Orphey, a young up-and-comer, replaced Joseph at cornerbacks coach and will remain there. Joseph was to be the sage in the room who called the back end. Orphey was brought in so Texas could get younger in the secondary.

Joseph at cornerbacks and Akina at safety made zero sense. We know Steve Sarkisian agrees because it didn’t happen. But with Joseph gone, I can see the vision with Akina, and it’s tangential to some things we’ve talked about in the past—specifically, marrying the three layers of defense together.

Indeed, heading into last year, I wasn’t worried about the secondary, linebackers, or defensive front. I was curious about how they would all play together. Offseason intel was very positive, and we saw how that played out this year.

Losing Joseph comes with two main concerns: Who will call the secondary, and how well will the secondary feather into the rest of the defense? Akina answers both of those questions.

It’s clear Johnny Nansen, Texas’ linebackers coach, continues to have significant input with Sark, his longtime friend. IT believes Nansen was integral to Texas improving team defense last season. Throughout the offseason, we heard he was tasked with getting team run defense on the same page as Texas altered coverages with the departures of T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy. Overall defensive cohesion was superb all year long.

Keeping that cohesion is paramount, and that’s Akina’s greatest selling point, even more so than his track record of development from two decades ago. Akina’s long list of success stories is the headliner, but it buries the lede. The lede is that despite the loss of Joseph, Texas will have continued coaching continuity thanks to Akina and Nansen having coached at Arizona together.

There are certainly aspects of the hire to question, namely his age and how that ties into recruiting. From a coaching perspective, his age isn’t a concern. Akina will surely have a proxy on the recruiting trail. We’ll see how well that works.

Gideon and Joseph left a loaded defensive back room for the old sage. At the same time that he has a ton of talent to work with, Akina reunites with a coach he’s very familiar with.

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I expect this hire to work out well.

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