Auburn’s Xavier Atkins keeps adding to the hardware shelf, and the latest nod comes with his name on the Bednarik Award watchlist for the 2026 season.
That announcement landed Friday, giving the Tigers’ standout linebacker another preseason honor after a 2025 campaign that made him impossible to ignore. The Bednarik Award, named for the late great Chuck Bednarik, goes annually to the best defensive player in the country, according to the Maxwell Football Club.
Atkins was already one of the defining names around Auburn football last season, even in a year when Keldric Faulk went in the first round of the NFL Draft. Atkins still managed to keep pulling attention his way.
The numbers explain why. In 2025, the then-sophomore piled up 84 total tackles, including 60 solo stops, while adding nine sacks, two forced fumbles, a fumble recovery and an interception. That pick came against Oklahoma, and Atkins nearly took it to the house.
But the stat that really jumps off the page is the one in the backfield. Atkins finished with 17.0 tackles for loss, the most by any collegiate linebacker that season and the most ever by an Auburn linebacker in a single season.
The honors followed from there. Atkins earned Second Team All-America recognition, First Team All-SEC honors, a spot as a Chuck Bednarik Award Semifinalist, Monday Morning QB Birmingham Club’s SEC Most Valuable Lineman, and both SEC Co-Defensive Player of the Week and Bronko Nagurski National Defensive Player of the Week after his performance against Arkansas.
This isn’t even his first time drawing Bednarik attention. He was a semifinalist for the award a year ago, his first season as a full-time starter. Before that, while at LSU, Atkins recorded just three tackles for the season.
Now he heads into 2026 with a full year of top-end production behind him and a bigger spotlight waiting. If Atkins avoids a sophomore slump and keeps rolling, opposing offenses are going to have their hands full.
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