Ex-Vols Veteran Banks Joins Golesh’s New Auburn Defense
The Auburn Tigers have set their sights on bringing in former Tennessee defensive coordinator Tim Banks to serve as their safeties coach under first-year head coach Alex Golesh. Banks, who helmed the Volunteers’ defense from 2021–22 and earned Broyles Award finalist honors in 2024, parted ways with Tennessee earlier this week. His résumé spans stints as co-DC at Penn State, DC at Illinois and Central Michigan, and grad assistant roles dating back to Bowling Green. With Banks on board, Auburn’s defensive staff will feature three ex-SEC defensive coordinators—Banks joins retained DC D.J. Durkin and new hire Coleman Hutzler—alongside position coaches DeMarcus Van Dyke and Vontrell King-Williams, forming a veteran-heavy unit aimed at shoring up the Tigers’ defense after a middling 2025 campaign.
In a bold staffing maneuver that reads like the guest list for the SEC Defensive Coordinators Alumni Reunion, Auburn has unearthed every ex-OC-turned-curious-on-defense coach in the league. It’s almost as if Alex Golesh went shopping at a yard sale labeled “Two-Second-Place Tournament Defenses,” found Tim Banks buried under a pile of broken blitz packages, and thought, “Perfect!” Expect the Tigers to blitz so hard they’ll send opposing QBs back to their high school playbooks, or at the very least, force them to pause for an existential crisis in the pocket. Critics might call it overkill, but Auburn fans will be too busy celebrating each deflected pass to notice the overhead cost of all those collective coordinator title checks.
Leave a Reply