Penn State Football hires Anthony Poindexter as safeties coach

Penn State Football hires Purdue co-defensive coordinator Anthony Poindexter as safeties coach, replacing Tim Banks

Purdue co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach Anthony Poindexter was hired as the new safeties coach of Penn State Football Sunday night.

Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports broke the story.

Poindexter, a 2020 College Football Hall of Famer, is replacing Tim Banks, who had been the safeties coach of Penn State Football since 2016. Banks moved on to be the defensive coordinator at Tennessee earlier this month.

Poindexter is from Virginia and played his college ball at the hometown University of Virginia. He was a consensus All-American in 1998, winning the ACC Defensive Player of the Year Award that season as well.  He was a seventh round pick in the 1999 draft and had a brief career with Ravens and Browns, winning a Super Bowl with the Ravens in 2001.

He was involved with the Virginia program as a grad assistant and eventually as a coach from 2003 to 2013. Poindexter was then the defensive coordinator and safeties coach at UConn from 2014-2016. He has been the co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach at Purdue since 2017.

Poindexter’s connections to the Virginia area are vital as Penn State needed to replace their top D.C./Maryland/Virginia (DMV) recruiter in Tyler Bowen, who took a job with Jaguars.

This was one of James Franklin’s bigger hires due to the fact that he lost two of the best recruiters on his staff with the departures of Banks and Bowen.

Safety play has been suspect the past couple of years at Penn State and 2021 will be a big season for that unit as the job opposite of Jaquan Brisker is a wide-open competition and there isn’t much experience within the group outside of Brisker. Poindexter will have some work to do there.