Ex-Maryland DBs coach Darrell Perkins joins Fordham staff
Former Maryland defensive backs coach Darrell Perkins has accepted the same position under Fordham coach Andrew Breiner, according to a source.
Perkins’s most recent job had been as the defensive coordinator at East River High in Orlando, Fla. He replaces Tim Cary, who left to become defensive coordinator at Trinity-Pawling School, a boarding school in upstate New York, per the source.
With Cary’s departure, Jon Wholley has been promoted as Fordham’s new defensive coordinator, according to the source. Wholley had previously shared that title with Cary.
The addition of Perkins reunites him with the fast-rising 32-year-old Breiner, an offensive whiz who was promoted in December to take over Fordham, which has quickly emerged as an FCS power. Perkins and Breiner were together at Connecticut from 2010–11 when Perkins oversaw the secondary and Breiner was an offensive graduate assistant.
While with the Huskies, Perkins also worked four years with the up-and-coming Wholley, who was a fellow assistant. Last season was Perkins’s first as Maryland’s defensive backs coach. Before that, he coached cornerbacks at Old Dominion for a year.
Perkins was Connecticut’s secondary coach from 2010–13, tutoring cornerbacks Blidi Wreh-Wilson and Dwayne Gratz, both third-round picks in the 2013 NFL draft. In 2010, Perkins helped the Huskies finish fifth in the FBS in interceptions on the way to winning a share of the Big East title and playing in the Fiesta Bowl, their first appearance in a BCS game.
Prior to UConn, Perkins was defensive backs coach at Louisiana-Monroe from 2008–09, defensive coordinator at Charleston Southern in 2007 and linebackers coach/special teams coach at Northern Colorado in 2006. He was also Charleston Southern’s defensive backs coach/special teams coordinator from 2004–05.
Perkins spent 2002–03 as Ferris State’s defensive backs coach and special teams coordinator following two years as a defensive graduate assistant at Purdue. He got his start as a football assistant coach at his alma mater, Gateway High in Aurora, Co., from 1997–99 after four seasons as the head boys basketball coach at Legacy High in Fort Collins, Co., which he twice led to the state playoffs.
Perkins was a running back at Wyoming from 1985–89.
He joins a Fordham squad that has 18 starters back, highlighted by star junior running back Chase Edmonds, the Patriot League’s reigning Offensive Player of the Year. The Rams open their season Sept. 3 at Navy.
