Former Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele has agreed a deal to join Tennessee’s football coaching staff, sources told ESPN.
Steele, 62, has been Auburn’s defensive coordinator for the past five seasons, but was not retained by Auburn’s new coach Bryan Harsin, who hired former Vanderbilt manager Derek Mason as defensive coordinator.
Steele, a Broyles Award finalist as an assistant college football coach during the 2017 season, has deep ties to Tennessee. He played in Tennessee and began his coaching career in Tennessee, both under the direction of Johnny Majors. Steele was a finalist for the flight head coaching job in 2018 when Jeremy Pruitt was hired. Steele and Pruitt worked together with Nick Saban’s staff in Alabama.
While at Auburn, Steele’s defenses finished in the top twenty nationally by scoring defense in four of his five seasons on the plains. He is considered one of the best recruiters in the country and has worked for some of the big names in college football, including Bobby Bowden, Tom Osborne, Dabo Swinney, Les Miles and Saban. Steele also worked in the NFL as a linebacker for the Carolina Panthers from 1995 to 1998.
“He’s an excellent coach and as strong as anyone I’ve seen in hiring,” Bowden told ESPN.
Auburn owes Steele just over $ 5 million from the contract he signed last January, making him the highest-paid defensive coordinator in college football at the time.
Steele returns to his maternal soul amid internal investigation into alleged inadequacies within the Tennessee football program that has been underway since November. The university announced last month that it had maintained the services of Michael Glazier and Kyle Skillman with the law firm of Bond, Schoeneck and King to help review what the university said in a statement that were “regulatory issues that are they have made it available to us “.
ESPN reported last week that Tennessee had not extended the contracts of assistant football coaches and had stopped hiring coaches for vacancies while Flights continued to investigate whether violations occurred within the program.