FB+ welcome our new Defensive Coordinator — Tyler Santucci!

[OldPhiKap]

https://twitter.com/dukefootball/sta...Zn8ILjMWeMp1KQ

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/la...271593897.html

[chrishoke]

Welcome Coach!

https://goduke.com/news/2023/1/24/fo...ordinator.aspx

[Acymetric]

Great get and a long history with Elko. Excited to have him on board!

[Bob Green]

Great get and a long history with Elko. Excited to have him on board!

I echo Acy’s comments. I’m excited Santucci has worked with Elko multiple times in the past.

[johnb]

Santucci makes the 3rd former Aggie on the team. Elko, of course, was the first.

It seems likely that this is the 4th time that Elko has recruited Santucci (Wake, ND, A&M, and us).

It’s impressive that guys who played for Penn and Stony Brook would be important architects of a great defense in College Station.

The 3rd Aggie? As discussed elsewhere, Myles Jones has transferred from A&M and began classes this month. 2023 would be Jones’s 7th college season, though the past two have been wrecked by injury. A former 4 star, he started 30 games for A&M, with his breakout years being 2019 and 2020 when he was reportedly A&M’s top cornerback (and Elko was calling defensive plays)—in one of those years, A&M had a top 10 defense, nationally, including a defeat of Alabama (which was, as is often the case, #1 at the time). After the 2021 season (when he barely played), Jones won the end-of-year award for “Top Conditioned Athlete.” After his 2019 season, he won Defensive Most Improved and Defensive Strength Awards.

I mention a player’s awards on a coaching thread since it strikes me that there must be a lot of competition to be considered the best conditioned athlete on a competitive SEC football team. I assume it means that coaches like/respect him (reinforced by Elko’s recruiting him to Duke), and that Jones is a workhorse in the weight room and practice field—even after suffering a season-ending injury. Will his apparent work ethic impact our other players? Will he regain the form/health that led him to being considered a likely/possible NFL DB? Will Jones be a sort-of player/coach in the locker room, something of an extension of Santucci and Elko? Who knows, but it strikes me that both of these guys would be big positives for next year’s team.

(Oh, and much of the above was “adapted” from a post I did a couple of days ago in the Spring game thread).

https://www.si.com/college/tamu/foot...duke-mike-elko
https://12thman.com/staff-directory/tyler-santucci/1836
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Elko
https://12thman.com/sports/football/...es-jones/10646