Six years after a college career that saw him throw for over 7,000 yards in a golden helmet former Irish quarterback Tommy Rees has been named Notre Dame’s new offensive coordinator at the fresh age of 27 years old. Rees will continue to be the quarterbacks coach–a position he has held since 2017–while running backs coach Lance Taylor has been promoted to running game coordinator, as well.
Here are a trio of reactions to the new offensive staff.
The Search that Wasn’t
Notre Dame reportedly engaged in a national search for a new offensive coordinator, although it appears they had their minds made up a while ago about the future of the program. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Once news broke of the imminent departure of former OC Chip Long the beat media in South Bend managed to cobble together the information that Tommy Rees was the likely pick with the possibility that Lance Taylor would be involved. It turns out, that’s exactly what happened.
The PR side to this doesn’t look great, if that even matters. Recently fired Mississippi State head coach Joe Moorhead was reportedly contacted by Notre Dame and some discussions took place with Todd Monken (also recently fired as OC by the Cleveland Browns) in the mix, as well. From the reports it seems like these talks didn’t amount to a whole lot. Basically, Brian Kelly kicked the tires in a few places and circled back home to his former player.
If you aren’t a fan of the hire this surely adds more fuel to the fire. If you’re willing to accept that many believe Rees is truly a rising star and near perfect fit for the program a cursory search was to be expected. Assuming Notre Dame feels assured about their choice perhaps they were better off announcing Rees rather quickly back in December.
Two-Year Judgement
Personally, I’m not in love with this new hire. However, I realize the long history of bad takes about assistant coaches that has permeated college football for decades. Attempting to grade the hires of head coaches is sometimes a fool’s errand and doing so for assistants is even more difficult.
What does seem clear is that this is a big victory for Ian Book in his final season at quarterback. This is where the familiarity and close relationship could pay off handsomely for 2020. Further, the hire of Rees also looks like an extremely popular decision inside the locker room–although, like judging hires, the history of player-approved coaches isn’t always spotless either.
🏈☘️
Coach Brian Kelly announces the promotion of two rising stars in the coaching profession, Tom Rees and Lance Taylor.
🔗 https://t.co/fFSdGqJ29n#GoIrish pic.twitter.com/Dq4Y31Uv0w
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) January 14, 2020
I’d argue a super-duper brand new offense (as much as could be possible given the players’ skill sets on campus and Kelly’s willingness to change) might raise the ceiling for 2020 but also could crash and burn forcing so much installation and learning. Keeping Rees on board does feel like the 2020 ceiling won’t be pushed much higher but the floor should be very stable to push towards another 10+ win season.
I’m more curious about 2021 and beyond when Book leaves because that will be a major challenge for Rees. I know there’s a growing concern that the Clemson game this upcoming fall is the litmus test for the young offensive coordinator but for me this is shaping up to be a two-year judgement unless things swing wildly for good or bad in 2020.
Running the Ball More, But Should They?
When Chip Long was hired he was supposed to bring a renewed emphasis on running the ball. Like most of the Brian Kelly era it was an up and down commitment. Following the one-game audition for Tommy Rees during the bowl there’s once again a belief that the new OC is signalling an importance on running the ball as the driver of the Irish offense.
This seems hard to believe.
Tommy Rees was a quarterback, after all. He’s coaching the quarterbacks. He was a player on campus for 9 out of the top 12* most passing attempts in a game for the Brian Kelly era. The biggest and most experienced weapon for 2020 is quarterback Ian Book who will be receiving tutelage from someone adept at changing the play at the line of scrimmage, often to benefit the passing game.
*I thought it was an interesting and somewhat shocking stat to discover from the end of the 2014 Florida State game until the 2019 Georgia game the Irish went 58 games with the most passing attempts being 41 in a single contest. It’s not exactly the Big 12 conference.
This is a set up for running the ball a lot? I’m not so sure about that, plus while everyone should covet offensive balance, until further notice the Irish look primed to be far more effective throwing the ball under Book’s leadership. A more diverse, and difficult to defend running game through scheme is possible I just don’t think it’s likely.
I’m not in love with this hire either, but I don’t think it deserves the negativity that has been coming from some (not on this site). I also think about his playing days and how physically he wasn’t able to compete but his football IQ kept us in a lot of games that I think we otherwise would have lost given the qb situation at the time. I’m not sure how that translates to coaching. I also wonder how much he influenced Book to block out all the noise and work through the rough start to this past season. I guess what I’m getting at is I see potential but not comfortable with have such a big unknown.
If it was his intelligence that kept his head above water as quarterback here, I’m not sure how that could be viewed as anything other than a positive on the coaching front. Isnt that precisely what you want from your coaches?
I really meant that as a positive (after rereading I realize it doesn’t sound that way). And overall my comment seems to have a negative tone which was not intended. I meant it to sound like I’m happy with what I have seen from him but nervous about the unknown step up to OC. I’ve always had great respect for TR because he did more with less. Sorry for the confusion.
Not to be relentlessly positive, because I would hate to steal Brendan’s shtick, but when you say things like “the floor should be very stable” coming off of the best Notre Dame offensive season ever that sounds like something I can be on board with.
As far as his ceiling goes isn’t his career the exact image of the super exciting young coach?
Sean McVay – Played QB, 1 year as Offensive Assistant, 3 years as TE Coach, 3 Years as OC, NFL Head Coach
Joe Brady – Played WR, 2 years as Offensive Assistant, 1 year as passing game coordinator, NFL OC
Zac Taylor – Played QB, 2 years as an Assistant, 2 years as QB coach, College OC -> NFL QB Coach ->NFL Head Coach
Back-shoulder Tommy – Played QB, Grad assistant, Offensive Assistant, 3 years as QB coach, Offensive Coordinator
Seems like his resume stacks up with those guys, none of whom were kidnapped in a panel van and forced to coach a Sun Belt team for two seasons to prove they could do it.
I think the bigger issue isnt the resume stack, but that there is one name on the top of the resume for all but two of those years.
That said, I think he can do it, and as Eric says for 2020 it is an easy decision. I dont give a lot of credence to player comments, they are unlikely to be negative. However, Book seems particularly enamored of him and that will be, by far, the most important player on the field next year given the loss of the top RB and the three top pass catchers.
This was not the best offensive season ever. Most points scored, sure. Not the best offensive season ever. We were ranked #25 offensively by FEI (per possession basis). I refuse to use ESPN, but I believe we were generally ranked around 20 in SP+ as well.
SP+ is only a recent ESPN acquisition, for what it’s worth. Bill Connelly has been running it for years.
i think he means he refuses to use ESPN’s FPI.
This move seems to be about emphasizing fit over name. ND probably could’ve tried to get Moorhead or Monken, but we don’t know what sort of fit they’d be at ND. Every hire Kelly has made since rebooting himself post-’16 has emphasized the fit with this school (except, probably not coincidentally, Chip Long).
I think it’s a worthy gamble given the pre-existing relationship with Book and the other players. I’m also a big Lance Taylor fan and that doesn’t hurt the way I view this either.
I agree, Andy. The Rees fit for Kelly and Book appear to be seamless and should make for a solid offense next year. I also agree with Eric’s take in the article that I am not as confident about how the offense looks in 2021 and beyond, but that is a 2021 and beyond problem that’s probably not worth worrying about too, too much right now.
Kinda disagree with the notion that ND won’t be running a lot. They’re returning 5 o-linemen. I think they’ll be more of a power team with 2 TE’s (Tremble + Wright/Mayer) and wear down the opposition. I think they’ll still try to do jet sweeps and screen passes and get the ball to space for playmakers, but I think it will be perhaps more of a power/running design then we realize right now. And I agree that I’m not sure if that’s totally for the better or not just yet, but if in 2-3 years they have guys like Tyree and the highly rated kid from NC that I think Taylor def. should win, then maybe in time that won’t be so bad.
On the first point, there is a somewhat odd only-matters-to-the-obsessives-on-message-boards (/raises hand) thing going on where it appears that some folks on the ND staff have told a few ND writers that Rees interviewed with Oregon and asked them not to report it until yesterday. Meanwhile, apparently none of the reporting from Oregon writers nor national writers have indicated that Rees ever interviewed at Oregon (e.g., https://twitter.com/BruceFeldmanCFB/status/1217462174152478720?s=20), or was even a candidate.
Combine that with the “extensive national search” from Kelly in the press release announcing the hires when that appears to be pretty significant hyperbole, it seems like there is a bizarrely executed PR campaign by the athletic department to sell the hire.
What effect does this have on anything? Not much. Just amusing.
They were talking about Rees interviewing with Oregon pretty freely on the II podcast that dropped on Monday. Perhaps Feldman didn’t mention Rees (in a tweet about impressive candidates, not all candidates, as he used the word “among” those involved) as they also said that Oregon was looking for an OC with experience..So Feldman probably wasn’t told by the Oregon source that Rees was a strong candidate for that job. Adds up to me. Don’t really think there was a multi-platform media conspiracy to withhold the information, just wasn’t very meaningful.
I don’t disagree with the notion you hint towards – that Kelly pretty much knew he wanted to promote Rees and Taylor, but word is they did talk to Monken and Moorhead. If that’s the case and Kelly still felt more comfortable with the continuity of what he knows he has versus the unknown of bringing a new voice in, that’s the bet he’s making and risk he’s taking. I’m not too bent out of shape by calling it “extensive”, even though it certainly wasn’t.
I think that’s almost certainly the most likely explanation: Rees talked with Oregon but was not seriously considered (kind of like Moorhead with ND, but Oregon more seriously considered more people), but ND wanted to play it up to make it look like he was in-demand externally.
That said, I don’t really care how in-demand he was externally: he has spent almost all of his time post-high school at ND, for better or for worse. ND/Brian Kelly should have the best possible read on him of anyone. So, one can take that as a very good sign that he got hired.
Is that actually going to play out well? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The best article I’ve seen on this (other than this one, of course!) is on UHND, noting that Kelly is basically staking how his career is viewed on this hire. I hope it pans out!
So we still get to hire another coach. Who are we looking at? Will it be TE coach?
I just can’t wait until Ian Book starts to make late play adjustments with only 9 seconds left on the play clock, just like Tommy! I remember they used to aggravate me so much – hopefully time has made me more patient (most likely not, unfortunately).
Is there any advantage (assuming Reed does well of course) in hiring Rees because he’s likely to stay around for awhile. If another OC did well he might have gotten a HC job somewhere but Rees maybe has at least 5 years before he’d likely get that chance even if the offense goes gangbusters under him.
Hey Eric — any chance you might pool together the revenue from the gold subscriptions to make Lance Taylor’s title the “18Stripes.com Run Game Coordinator Lance Taylor”?
(Although I probably shouldn’t put that thought in the universe, lest the newspaper ad crew get wind of it and try to sponsor running the damn ball)
I must be getting the friends-and-family price on the gold subscription if the amount you guys are paying can be pooled to endow a Notre Dame football coaching position.
If Jay Mohr can sponsor a position, it can’t be too much $$.
Some back of the napkin math…..~5,000,000 18S.com subscribers at the $99.99 discounted annual rate….that’s a couple hundred-thousand just right there. I can’t even imagine the coinage these guys are raking in on side-banner ads. Shouldn’t be a problem at all to get the 18S.com name all over ND football. Maybe even sponsor the actual stripes?
I can see it now…
* Stripe 1 sponsored by 18stripes.com
Stripe 2 sponsored by 18stripes.com……
Stripe 18 sponsored by onefootdown.com…..wth?*
Hard to say exactly which one is the 18th stripe, though. Also, I’ll be launching 42degrees.biz soon – $14.99/month – mostly redirects to articles written here.
Etienne coming back for his senior year. Fun. Whoopee. Dabo’s playing real life NCAA14 where it’s super easy to convince your upperclassmen to not declare for the draft. That almost feels ethically wrong to not advise a young man in that situation to be a top pick given how quickly RB careers go and he’s just putting 1 more year of miles on his body for no money.
Oh well. At least the Eagles are interviewing USC’s Graham Harrell for their OC job.
I thought he was only a sophomore. That makes no sense, but glad to see a kid wants his degree.
Clemson’s over/under for regular season wins next year will be 11.5, and they won’t give even odds on the over.
Their schedule is ridiculously easy again. Unless Florida State gets an instant reboot it’s completely manageable and I would take the over on 11.5 wins even with not rewarding odds. OOC is Akron, Citadel, South Carolina and Notre Dame.
@Notre Dame is by far the toughest game Clemson will have and possibly the only top 25 team they’ll play until playoffs again (though maybe Louisville gets there if they stay on the upswing). And there should be no doubt Ol’ Disrespect Dabo will try to blow out ND to make his case that his team is good, darnit it’s just that no one respects them! /s
OK, now that T Reese is the OC, as we note here, he will be up against the redoutable Venables, who absolutely handed it to Chip Long last year. The stakes will potentially be enormous. It was fascinating to watch Venables wield such a big if short lived impact against LSU, only to have LSU find the weakness and exploit it. Our well-paid 18 Stripes research department has never given us a satisfactory answer as to what Venables did to us and why we did not respond, but the question is now rearing its ugly head. Does Tommy have any better prayer than Long to find a way to out-chess Clemson’s DC?