Valley grad Tyler Santucci settling in as new defensive coordinator at Duke

Tyler Santucci was going to play in the NFL. He was sure of it.

His standout career at Valley segued into AP All-American status as a linebacker at Stony Brook, and that, naturally, would lead to a regular gig on Sunday afternoons in the fall.

But somewhere along the way, the dream yielded to reality. The FCS school on Long Island would be his final stop as a player.

If he couldn’t make it to the NFL as a player, he reasoned, he just would have to get there in a different capacity.

After graduating in 2010, Santucci plunged into the coaching ranks. He began as a grad assistant on Stony Brook’s football staff, and now, 13 years later, he is running the defense of an ACC program.

In January, Santucci was hired as Duke’s defensive coordinator/linebackers coach under head coach Mike Elko. Elko and Santucci have a long history, having served on three previous coaching staffs together. Their most recent team-up was at Texas A&M, where Santucci coached linebackers under then-defensive coordinator Elko.

They also coached together at Wake Forest and Notre Dame.

“He’s always been a phenomenal young coach, and I’ve really watched him grow into his own,” Elko said in a statement to the Trib. “He’s really one of the elite young football minds in the country right now. We’re just really excited that he decided to come here with his family to lead our defense.”

Santucci said he and Elko always have clicked but not necessarily because they see eye-to-eye on everything.

“I just think we understand each other,” Santucci, 34, said. “I think oftentimes it’s not the people that you see things the same as that you’re compatible with. It’s the differences that you can learn from, the other viewpoint, and see things differently and maybe by changing the way you frame the picture.

“It allows you to expand your vision to, ‘Oh, it could be that also.’ … I think that we kind of had a mutual understanding of, ‘I see it this way, and I see it this way,’ and then coming to the mutual understanding of, ‘OK, that’s how we both see it. What’s the best way to see it?’ ”

Santucci is the new guy on a staff that was established last season. Elko took over a team that had gone a combined 1-17 in the ACC between 2020 and 2021. In 2022, the Blue Devils went 5-3 in the ACC and 9-4 overall, including a victory in the Military Bowl.

Elko was named ACC Coach of the Year for the quick turnaround. But for his encore season, he would need a new defensive coordinator after Robb Smith, according to reports, left for personal reasons.

Enter Santucci, who was coming off a season as co-defensive coordinator/linebackers coach at Texas A&M under Jimbo Fisher. Santucci has spent the past two months immersing himself in the program and getting to know his players with spring ball approaching March 24.

“Getting everybody on the same page from a coaches standpoint and then continuing that through to our players and trying to build meaningful relationships with our players through time, through being present with them,” he said when asked how he has spent the past several weeks. “The whole staff is really the same except for me.

“They’ve been around coach Elko and established a culture here. … I’m just coming in on the second part of that.”

Santucci inherits a unit that finished fourth in the 14-team ACC in rush defense, fifth in scoring defense and sixth in sacks. There are some areas that need to be improved, such as yards allowed (10th), interceptions (10th) and pass defense (12th).

Among the key players returning will be defensive tackle Dewayne Carter, a second-team All-ACC selection in ’22; defensive back Jaylen Stinson (74 tackles, 2 INTs); and linebackers Cam Dillon (61 tackles, 2 forced fumbles, 1 fumble recovery) and Dorian Mausi (44 tackles).

Santucci said he likes the defense’s mix of experience and young talent. His job will be to mold it into the best defense in the ACC.

“We want to be aggressive. We want to be multiple,” he said. “We don’t want to sit back and let (the opponent) dictate what we do. We want to kind of dictate what the offense does and have the mentality that we have enough that we can withstand anything.

“After you win nine games in a season, it’s even more important now to be careful where your next step goes and making sure it’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be. Never skip a step through the process of how we do things. Oftentimes, human nature is, ‘I’ve tasted success. It’s time to relax.’ And that ‘relax syndrome’ can get you in trouble in this game of football.”

It’s no secret that Elko and his staff are trying to build a football culture on a campus and in a community that is basketball crazy. Over the past 30 years, Duke’s men’s basketball program has been arguably the most successful in the nation, while the football team has had only sporadic highs in that stretch.

But Santucci said he doesn’t see a situation where the sports have to be in competition.

“I think the goal is to make Duke athletics a premier athletics program in the country,” he said. “I don’t think it’s about football, basketball. … I think everybody is cheering for each other. What coach Elko and his staff were able to do in one year, I think things look bright.

“You hope that we can continue to ascend where we complement all the other sports programs at the university.”

Santucci appears to be just scratching the surface in his career. Still relatively young, he has plenty of time to add to his knowledge, build up his coaching contacts and fatten his resume.

The NFL is still on his radar, but he is in no hurry to get there. He is putting all his energy into running his own defense for the first time. He said whatever the future holds — be it a college head coaching job or a spot on an NFL staff — it will stay in the future and not govern his present.

“If I ask the kids to go step by step, then I better do the same,” he said. “I am a step-by-step human being. I’m trying to be a really good leader and defensive coordinator at Duke right now … and trying to do this really well. That’s worked pretty good for me to this point.”