Report: Northwestern to hire SIU DC DJ Vokolek as defensive assistant

Northwestern plans to hire Southern Illinois defensive coordinator DJ Vokolek as an assistant coach on interim head coach David Braun's staff, ESPN's Pete Thamel reports.

Vokolek comes to Northwestern with 30 years of coaching experience, notably overlapping with Braun at Northern Iowa in 2017-18, when Braun coached defensive line and then outside linebackers, and Vokolek was the assistant head coach and linebackers coach.

Vokolek's exact role on the staff is yet to be announced, but the assumption is that he will fill the last open spot on the defensive side of the ball. Braun made it clear at Big Ten Media Days last week that he still plans to call the plays on defense, so it is likely that Vokolek will take on some sort of a supporting role.

Vokolek comes to Northwestern from Southern Illinois, but he had yet to coach a game for the Salukis. He took the defensive coordinator job there after spending the 2022 season as a defensive quality control coach at Nebraska and ended up being rerouted to Evanston through Carbondale.

SIU head coach Nick Hill spoke highly of Vokolek's versatility in their press release after the hire.

"The thing that impressed me the most in the interview process — he's going to put a scheme together that fits our players," Hill said. "He's played multi-front defense, odd-front, some of the three-safety concepts you're seeing."

Vokolek's versatile and flexible style is evident in his resume, which features 11 different roles over 25 years as an assistant coach. His longest stint was nine straight seasons, from 2006-14, at Missouri State, where he was the associate head coach and defensive coordinator in a rugged Missouri Valley conference that features power programs like North Dakota State, South Dakota State and Northern Iowa.

He then moved on to an assistant coach and defensive backs role for a year at Buffalo under then-head coach Lance Leipold, and finished 5-7 with a defense in the middle of the pack in the MAC.

He returned to Northern Iowa as an assistant head coach and linebackers coach from 2017-21 to complement his earlier stint from 2003-05. The 2005 Panthers team lost the NCAA Division 1-AA title game to Appalachian State.

In his recent stretch at Northern Iowa, the Panthers showed consistent improvement and were especially stingy in his final few seasons there.

While Vokolek was an assistant from 2017-21, the Panthers finished with a record of 34-26, including a 10-5 campaign in 2019 that ended with a loss to now-FBS program James Madison in the playoffs.

Vokolek moved onto Nebraska in 2022 as a defensive quality-control analyst, where he got to see his son, Travis Vokolek, a Husker tight end who has since earned an UDFA contract with the Ravens, play his senior season.

Now, DJ Vokolek has found himself back in the Big Ten after the firing of Pat Fitzgerald on July 10 in the wake of a hazing scandal at Northwestern. The dismissal led to Braun's promotion to interim head coach and created an opening on Northwestern's staff.

What Northwestern is getting is a veteran coach with three decades of experience coaching defenses. He also gives Braun a familiar face to have confidence in as he takes on the biggest challenge of his career.