Oh, Notre Dame. You messed up.
Marcus Freeman hosted Utah offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig on campus this past Friday and Saturday while news about other candidates stopped and the reporting went cold throughout the entire weekend. All signs pointed to Ludwig joining Notre Dame once he returned to Salt Lake City, got his affairs in order, and informed head coach Kyle Whittingham of his decision.
However, late Monday morning news broke that Ludwig would be staying at Utah. So, Notre Dame is back to square one searching for a new OC (and new OL coach too!) as we enter day 11 since Tommy Rees left for Alabama.
1) If this deal truly did collapse due to Notre Dame being unable or unwilling to pay Ludwig’s $2.8 million buyout it leaves a terrible taste in my mouth. Setting aside that figure for a second, the optics of bringing Ludwig to campus only to swing and miss so publicly like this is awful PR for Notre Dame and complicates the search for a new offensive coordinator and other assistants, too.
2) However, something doesn’t smell right about a $2.8 million buyout. How is that possible? Did we just enter the “release clause” era of college football? Ludwig was reportedly making $1.25 million per season at Utah and that math is difficult to figure out. Ludwig signed a 3-year deal at Utah in 2019 for $2.5 million TOTAL and there’s really no reporting on his 2022 salary or new contract. Then, we have reporting from the Notre Dame side that Ludwig signed a new deal 2 weeks ago which brought this huge buyout of 3/4 of his full new contract. That sounds awfully dirty in a way, but a pretty crafty move by Utah.
3) I was skeptical of Notre Dame getting Ludwig at the very beginning. He’s on the older side, was entrenched at Utah with deep ties to Whittingham, had a veteran quarterback coming back for 2023 (although they just confirmed he tore his ACL in the bowl game so his status is TBD), and had a great thing going with back-to-back conference titles in the Pac-12. No one was really sure of his recruiting prowess, either. I don’t know, it just felt like something that was always going to be tough to pull off.
4) If you’d like to feel better about the situation, I’m not sold that Ludwig was going to be a great fit at Notre Dame anyway. I ended up liking him a lot more after digging deeper, although long-term concerns about his ability to develop and sustain quarterback and wide receiver play could’ve been a frustrating factor down the road.
5) What is Sam Hartman thinking right now? Talk of him leaving with or because Rees was taking another job got nipped in the bud pretty quickly. He does seem pretty locked in to Notre Dame and as you’ll see below I don’t think he had cause to be super excited about Ludwig coming to Notre Dame from his quarterbacking perspective. Still, this chaos and instability isn’t great and could harm his final season in college.
I had this write up ready for Ludwig and out of spite I’m just going to keep it here and publish it today anyway, enjoy.
*****
Born in Utah, Ludwig played receiver at Snow College then Portland State while his coaching career began in 1987. His first big job came as quarterbacks coach at Boise State for 1995-96 right before the Broncos became a national power in college football. He then coordinated an impressive 10-1 Cal Poly team in 1997 and immediately moved on the following stops–and coached the following quarterbacks–over the last quarter century:
- Fresno State (1998-2001) with Billy Volek for 2 years then the last 2 years with future no. 1 NFL pick David Carr.
- Oregon (2002-04) with Jason Fife and 2 years of Kellen Clemens.
- Utah (2005-08) with Brett Ratliff, and 3 years of (current Eagles QB coach) Brian Johnson.
- California (2009-10) with Kevin Riley and Brock Mansion.
- San Diego State (2011-12) with Ryan Lindley, Ryan Katz, and Adam Dingwell.
- Wisconsin (2013-14) with Joel Stave and Tanner McEvoy.
- Vanderbilt (2015-18) with Johnny McCrary and 3+ years with Kyle Shurmur.
- Utah (2019-22) with Tyler Huntley, Jake Bentley and 2 years of Cameron Rising.
Ludwig has coordinated offenses under head coaches Pat Hill, Mike Bellotti, Kyle Wittingham, Jeff Tedford, Rocky Long, Gary Andersen, and Derek Mason over that time period.
The Ludwig Offensive Scheme
As you can imagine for someone who has been coordinating so long and came up through the proliferation of the spread offense, Ludwig has been fairly flexible with his scheme while balancing a team’s identity with its current personnel. He’s used wide open finesse spread offenses back in his Fresno days, West Coast offenses, pro-style offenses, and especially in his 2nd stint with Utah he was a mixture of power spread concepts and pro-style concepts behind gap run blocking.
While he’s had plenty of success with quarterbacks, Ludwig has coached some really talented running backs. The following have run for 1,000 yards in a single season under Ludwig:
Jaime Kimbrough, Fresno State
Paris Gaines, Freson State
Terrence Whitehead, Oregon
Onterrio Smith, Oregon
Darrell Mack, Utah
Quinton Ganther, Utah
Shane Vereen, California
Adam Muema, San Diego State
Ronnie Hillman, San Diego State
James White, Wisconsin
Melvin Gordon, Wisconsin
Ralph Webb, Vanderbilt
Ke’Shawn Vaughn, Vanderbilt
Zach Moss, Utah
Tavion Thomas, Utah
He’s also coached other talented running backs like Corey Clement (Wisconsin), Jahvid Best (California), and Matt Asiata (Utah) who were great backups or just missed out on the 1,000 yard mark.
Does Andy Ludwig fit in with Notre Dame? For what Marcus Freeman was reportedly interested in keeping as an identity for the program this is the exact type of coordinator to hire. If this is a 3-4 year arrangement the relationship should work really well, although for 2023 there will need to be some adjustments made.
It’ll be interesting to see how Ludwig utilizes an offense with Sam Hartman under center. Throwing deep was a big part of Hartman’s game at Wake Forest and this was far from a strength in the recent Utah offenses. Ludwig also utilized quarterback runs a lot for the Utes which isn’t a huge strength for Hartman, either.
Hartman also threw the ball a lot at Wake Forest, too. We knew this proliferation of chucking it through the air would be dialed back at Notre Dame and hiring Ludwig is almost certainly a strong movement in that direction. Hartman has averaged over 300 yards passing each of the last 2 seasons while Ludwig has coached plenty of sub-200 yard seasons and has topped out at around 240 yards per game.
Ludwig Stats
| YEAR | TEAM | RUN % | FEI |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Utah | 55.6% | 16 |
| 2021 | Utah | 57.6% | 7 |
| 2020 | Utah | 55.0% | 103 |
| 2019 | Utah | 64.6% | 15 |
| 2018 | Vanderbilt | 51.0% | 23 |
| 2017 | Vanderbilt | 46.3% | 49 |
| 2016 | Vanderbilt | 55.7% | 85 |
| 2015 | Vanderbilt | 56.8% | 116 |
| 2014 | Wisconsin | 66.8% | 17 |
| 2013 | Wisconsin | 61.0% | 23 |
| 2012 | San Diego State | 65.1% | 53 |
| 2011 | San Diego State | 51.9% | 55 |
| 2010 | California | 56.3% | 75 |
| 2009 | California | 54.5% | 43 |
In terms of formations, look, philosophy, and overall feel to the offense these are some things I’ve noticed:
Ludwig loves using tight ends and this had to be a massive selling point for Notre Dame. I went back through his last 10 years and 12 personnel is definitely his preferred base formation and he’s not shy about 13 personnel, either. He will use tight ends as H-backs or fullbacks but more generally deploys this position in a more modern manner both running routes and blocking all over the field.
You don’t typically see Ludwig spread the field out, instead favoring a proliferation of tight sets keeping receivers and tight ends close to the ball. In terms of the run game, receivers are a huge part of the blocking up front.
Going under center with the quarterback is definitely a feature. At times, the Ludwig offense can look a little basic as he relies upon a lot of one-back sets from under center without a bunch of fancy blocking. There’s a not insignificant amount of motion and pulling blockers but large stretches of games have a fundamental power gap blocking with a single-set back. While under center, the offense uses a ton of play-action with the quarterback rolling out to great effect.
Ludwig will face the most questions about his passing concepts and ability to move the ball through the air. At times, he won’t be shy about spreading the field out with 4 or 5-receiver sets (often including a tight end of course) but overall he favors a lot of short routes and especially crossing routes. If Notre Dame fans were looking for an explosive, vertical passing attack that’s probably not in the cards with Ludwig coordinating things.
***
GIF Time
Here’s one of the base tight formations:
You don’t see Ludwig’s offense spreading the field out to the sidelines a ton. In fact, I noticed in many of Utah’s game the cameraman adjusts for an incredibly zoomed in shot for television because all 11 players are in the close angle.
I looked at this as a “standard” Ludwing run play with 8 blockers up front:
I wanted to watch this game against Florida really closely. It was the season opener so Ludwig had time to prepare and I was curious how Utah approached a more “talented” SEC defense. For whatever reason, they didn’t utilize much pulling from blockers against the Gators. There was just a lot of ManBall™ blocking of “we’re blowing a hole through his gap” with 238-pound Tavion Thomas running through it.
There’s no denying that Ludwig’s running game has been extremely productive, especially the last 2 seasons at Utah. They led all of Power 5 in rushing average in 2021 (5.58 yards per carry) and were 9th nationally this past season (5.44 yards per carry). With 6,088 rushing yards and 75 rushing touchdowns from 2021-22, Ludwig basically put together Notre Dame’s 2017 #33Trucking campaign in back-to-back seasons.
Here’s a look at play-action from under center using Cam Rising’s mobility:
Although not super exciting or sexy, this play-action was a big part to Rising developing into a more efficient passer in 2022.
As witnessed against USC, you are forced to respect the Ludwig run game and it can leave you exposed to these quick play-action passes:
That’s 6’3″ 263-pound tight end/fullback Logan Kendall as the lead blocker out of the I-formation, by the way. It’ll be interesting to see how often Ludwig uses a tight end at Notre Dame in this role. Kendall didn’t carry the ball at all in 2022, but caught 5 passes and 1 touchdown.
It seems like Ludwig will spend long stretches under center in a more traditional run game but then will make a hard switch during a series or two by going shotgun and utilizing the read-option.
Rising was particularly devastating running the ball this way totaling 964 yards and 12 touchdowns at 6.3 yards a pop over the last 2 seasons–and that’s with sacks included!
Ludwig’s bread and butter is the crossing route:
This is where his West Coast scheme comes into play. This is another tight formation but with 5 pass catchers who run routes, and all but 1 are less than 10 yards pass the line of scrimmage at the time of the completion. Ludwig likes to run a very controlled passing game that attacks the field horizontally. There’s a primacy on efficiency and protecting the football.
Even when Ludwig spreads the offense out like in this 4-wide set, the concept remains the same:
He’s looking for a lot of quick, safe reads to “dink and dunk” the ball down the field.
Utah would attack down field occasionally, but more often targeted their excellent tight end Dalton Kincaid over the middle and down the seam a lot for their chunk plays like in this 5-wide set:
Kincaid dominated at Utah with 106 receptions, 1,400 yards, and 16 touchdowns over the last 2 seasons, numbers a little below but in the neighborhood of Michael Mayer.
Ludwig & Notre Dame
This is a curious hire for Notre Dame but perhaps expected based off Freeman’s wishes to build the program around tough line play up front on offense. Here are some thoughts on Ludwig and his fit with the Irish:
- I often read how Notre Dame should build around its traditional recruiting strengths and then people rattle off every position in some order rarely including wide receiver. This is definitely not a wide receiver friendly offense. Since 2009, Ludwig has only coached one wideout who broke 1,000 yards in a season and that was Wisconsin’s Jared Abbrederis catching an absurd 78 passes from 109 total receptions from Badgers’ receivers in 2013. Taking out the 2020 Covid year, the top wideout in the Ludwig offense has averaged 753 yards per season since 2009.
- This does look like the absolute picture perfect offense for Tyler Buchner to grow into and I couldn’t help but think that about the future.
- With Sam Hartman, it seems like an odd fit at best. He’s not the excellent athlete type who can boost the run game and he’s been the antithesis of a ball-control dink and dunk quarterback in the past. Clearly, Ludwig will open up the passing game more with Hartman under center, though. And this is probably a good opportunity for Hartman to prove he can protect the football and still be an efficient quarterback.
- This gap blocking scheme means Notre Dame’s offensive linemen should be getting larger, particularly on the interior.
- The type of blocking and running game will suit Audric Estime perfectly and only strengthens my conviction that he should become the clear no. 1 tailback in 2023. Ludwig really loves using a bigger main running back.
- If you’re a tight end at Notre Dame you have to love how much you will play under Ludgwig and be used in a variety of ways, too.
- My instinct is that this system will be too ManBall™ adjacent and we will be frustrated at times with it getting bogged down, not developing a lethal enough passing game compared to other top programs, and generally struggling against the elite defenses across the country. But I think really, really leaning into Notre Dame’s recruiting strengths is a solid decision and Sam Hartman being able to take Ludwig to new heights with his passing talent offers an intriguing mix for the future.
- I went back and watched the 2018 game against Vanderbilt which has been the only time Ludwig faced Notre Dame. If you recall, this was one of the red flag games from Brandon Wimbush. Notre Dame slowed down the Commodores’ run game pretty well but quarterback Kyle Shurmur impressed with 326 yards through the air, which included several key pass break-ups from Julian Love and Troy Pride. But, Vanderbilt ended up with 23 first downs, 420 yards (40 more yards than the Irish), and won the YPP battle by almost a full yard.
A little frustrating about the buyout. That looks like a complete screw-up on our part, or he didn’t tell us about it when they brought him in. However, presumably Utah mentioned it when they granted permission.
I am not sure what this means for the search. We probably lean in to a promotion about now. I would prefer McCullough over Parker.
Oh how great it is to be an ND fan.
Jump aboard the Tottenham train! Went from beating Man City week ago to season ending injuries to starting GK & crucial CM, losing to a mid-bottom table Leicester City and hobbling into a Champions League quarterfinal missing another CM with a slight injury, and another CM due to Yellow card accumulated suspension. And their shiny new January transfer signing did his best Gary Gray impersonation, which, as a defender, isn’t great.
Waking up to my sportz teams every day.
You could get into pickle ball
At least I’m not surprised when the Bears are cheap, not trying to win, and focused on ugly construction projects.
The @NDFootball team account was unwisely tweeting out Valentines Day messages until it got sufficiently yelled at that it decided to delete all the posts. And now Georgia is also looking for a new OC as Monken is off to the Ravens. Tough day out there.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
A top-40 offense
Is the best we can do
Georgia reportedly going back to Mike Bobo, so that’s at least one positive recent development.
At least we still get to have the most attractive job opening.
RUN THE DANG BALL BOBO
oh god the horror
the thing every sports team posts on valentines day
Completely agree with all 5 of your points. This is ugly.
That said, I feel like there’s more to this story — really, the school that paid Davie, Willingham, and Weis’s buyouts simultaneously balked at a buyout? The school that just paid a 20-something first-time OC $2 million a year is now cheaping out on an OC? I dunno, man.
I’m with you. While this is bad. I am confident that it is bad for other reasons than that we just wouldn’t pay a few million. What is sad is that ND probably leaked this because it’s actually bad for worse reasons.
What worse reasons do you figure that could be?
IMO the worst would be that Swarbrick didn’t like the hire and essentially overruled Freeman. I do think this is a possibility — Swarbrick hired Rees as OC before hiring Freeman, after all.
What I think is more likely is that Ludwig just turned ND down for a variety of personal and professional reasons — family didn’t want to go, ND is not an attractive job for OCs, etc. ND thought that was embarrassing, so they leaked a story blaming the buyout, which has backfired and made ND look even worse.
Swarbrick is a pretty smart guy but I don’t think his PR instincts are very good.
With how Under Armour, the ACC, and Men’s Basketball have been looking recently, I’m not sure his other instincts are that good either.
As much as I hate the ACC deal, I’d defend it as the least bad option under the circumstances.
Otherwise…yikes. Swarbrick looks terrible in this whole saga, IMO.
This is ND football. There are so many worse reasons that could be out there. But here are some that come to mind as at least worse-ish:
He saw our facilities and laughed at us.
He accidentally walked into a study session with the entire offense, they will all now be suspended for getting illegal academic help, so he left to avoid dealing with the fallout.
Some student from Philly threw batteries at him while he was on campus.
He only visited to steal secrets.
He interviewed, heard about the restrictions on recruiting and transfers, and said thanks but no thanks.
He learned that we just signed an extension with NBC with the stipulation that Jason Garrett continues to be an announcer.
He only visited in the first place so he could reject us and hurt our feelings.
The buyout was never even discussed because we simply offered less than his current salary.
oh god what if freeman took him to the backer
ND probably would have refused to pay his cover, even though it comes with a free long island.
I think the simplest explanation is that paying this buyout for a coordinator would be a record in that narrow category of payment and ND doesn’t want to be seen as a compensation leader. That is dumb but ND is very dumb about stuff involving football and spending money (making money, though, they are good at).
Well…I realize this was a long time ago and under a different AD, but Weis was the first of the MegaBuyouts. ND started the trend that has led us to Jimbo Fisher having an $85 million (or whatever it is) guaranteed buyout at A&M.
And, just a couple weeks ago, ND was publicly insisting that money would not be a factor in Tommy’s decision to leave or stay. I really don’t think the admin is shy about spending money on football right now. What could be the case, though is that they only want to spend that kind of money on “our guys,” i.e. alumni or people who are already inside the program.
Yes but has anybody bought out a coordinator for 2.5M as a transfer fee before paying his salary before? I don’t think so. And that may be unseemly to the admin for just some guy who is good but not the second coming. Whereas Weis very clearly needed to get fired, cost be damned.
Listening to ISD power hour, it really seems like this is the case. ND simply didn’t want to pay a giant buyout, or thought they could negotiate it with Utah, which makes no sense. They make it sound like it’s pretty much fact.
Yeah I think it’s likely, or at least the simplest scenario. It’s also pathetic and gives lie to the idea that this program is serious about competing for championships.
It would be consistent with the historical cycle of the powers that be at ND just waking up one day and deciding that football has gone too far.
Making that decision in the context of Freeman’s first real OC hire is terrible timing, though.
I cannot wait for the actual story to come out here. Did we really say no to just a buyout? Was this ND trying to cover for Ludwig turning us down, but the cover story sounds worse?
I’ll throw a new random conspiracy theory out there; Swarbrick thought Freeman was making a mistake in hiring Ludwig, so he used the buyout as an excuse to block the hiring.
But seriously, no matter the true story, this one is absolutely hilarious. Well done ND, 10/10 on the stupidity meter. (Or maybe 9/10, as I actually didn’t think Ludwig would be the best long-term fit for this role anyway).
This is some very 2000s ND stuff.
although at least then the MBB team was fun
Losing to a 1,500-student liberal arts college in the first round of the tournament would be preferable to this, yes.
RETVRN https://woffordterriers.com/sports/mens-basketball/opponent-history/university-of-notre-dame/176
Two more (mostly fake theories):
1. After winning the 2025 natty, it’s revealed that ND has embraced advanced stats and found Ludwig was a terrible “value above replacement hire.”
2. We learn tomorrow that a dark horse candidate has been waiting in the wings…..Jack Swarbrick…..JUNIOR.
Thought of another. Jurkovec wants to transfer back to ND, but he doesn’t fit into Ludwig’s scheme. Jenkins personally got the call from First Round Phil and sprinted to the hockey game to break up the little happy fun time MF, AL, and JS were having.
Charlie Weis Sr. has agreed to pay back a large portion of his buyout if ND hires Charlie Jr. as OC.
You know, Urban isn’t busy these days.
I would not be surprised if Swarbrick and Freeman assumed this was in the bag, hence why they publicly took him to a hockey game. Then the BoT was like no way we are paying a buyout when Urban is available!
I’m firmly in the camp that this was solely because of the buyout.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
There’s a recession on the horizon, time to batten down the hatches. Plus, now Jack gets to promote from within which he has done for a majority of his hires while at ND. Watt will likely be the new OL coach and then I would guess we’ll get CO-OC’s with McCullough and Parker. Especially with rumors that other coaches are looking to possibly leave, I would say they promote the 2 of them to retain them.
Scary flashbacks to Weis trying to figure out the defense. I would put this on Jack and the BOT, not Freeman. Seems like Freeman has a plan, but keeps getting stunted trying to get there.
But why bring him on campus? No one read the fine print before he got an invite?
The only thing that sorta makes sense here is ND assuming they could negotiate the buyout down, and that turned out to be wrong. Doesn’t seem very likely though.
I would say this exactly actually. I think a lot of bravado came into play. In my real life I do head-hunting for Accounting/Finance and the amount of companies that think their job is special enough to expect a candidate to accept a discounted salary is much higher than 50%. I’m shocked by how many people say to us, “Well let me talk to them, I’m sure I can talk them down to meet our salary requirements when I tell them how great it is here.”
I would say there was a lot of this. And I would say, Jack thought he had the money lined up (at the discounted rate) from boosters and then Utah told them to kick rocks and Jack had to go back to get more money and they told him no. I think they thought they had the whole deal (OC & OL) lined up and ready to go when Hiestand announced his retirement. Modern classic ND, fumbling at the goal line.
This fits an idea that someone brought up (I think nd09?) — did Jack agree to waive or reduce BK’s buyout money when he left? If so, he might think that others would be willing to do that too.
Interestingly, Sampson is now saying this is pretty much what happened.
Woof, this would be bad:
It’s like ND saying, “What if we made nobody in the fan base happy?”
Bold move, if it happens.
https://twitter.com/CFBHeather/status/1625892667564470275?s=20
Just missed it. Didn’t have the outside QB coach hire. Still a co-OC vibe.
What a depressing yet should have been predictable finish to the saga.
Next prediction. Golden leaves and Freeman takes over calling the defense with Mickens as Co-DC. Then they hire Lewszizky(sp?) back on staff for LBs.
Jack hires the MBB coach from Delaware to replace Brey. As word leaks that Brey was forced out of town.
Yeah, that’s a near-“can we just flash forward to 2025 to see who our next coach is?” situation.
If the worst case scenario I’m envisioning — Swarbrick 86’ed Ludwig — is true, then I think we could be at real risk of Freeman leaving soon.
“If” is doing a lot of work there, though.
Sadly prophetic
This sounds a lot more like malice than incompetence
Malicious incompetence
I was a student during the 2007 season, and after a certain number of embarrassing losses my roommate, extremely drunk, said that he wanted to go light his car on fire on Father Jenkins’ lawn (“Why your car?” “It’d be a crime if I lit his car on fire.” God bless drunk logic.) This became a running gag for us over the years, so whenever the athletic department, especially the football team, did something shamefully embarrassing, one of us would say “time to visit Father Jenkins’ house!”
Anyway, who’s up for a drive?
Look on the bright side, guys. The last time ND publicly botched a hiring with Urban, we ended up with …
Well, the time before that, with O’Leary, we at least got…
Shit. This is going to be bad, isn’t it?
Well, we have to add the buyout for the Utah OL coach to the Utah OC buyout, and hearing that Utah has structured their contracts for massive continuity, with accordingly big buyouts, that could have been approaching $4M. Plus salaries… and as somebody above mentioned ND historically doesn’t like to be on the leading edge of those kinds of deals. I’m not defending this so much as speculating on background, which might have led to our AD and his minions being overconfident (1) not only that they could talk Utah down, but (2) that they could talk the Administration up. If you get my drift?
Relatedly, it could be the powers that be felt these coordinators were simply not worth that much money. Maybe they’re right!
Optics are bad though.
As Eric wrote above:
Sounds pretty basic, I could see how it wouldn’t be too thrilling to spend a lot of money on…But I get (and agree) with the bigger point that if that is the guy the HC wants, that is the guy the HC should get.
Yeah. They might be right, but it’s not going to help them get good coordinators or keep their HC.
Not trying to go after you, but this just isn’t true:
Weis’s contract extension halfway through his first season, and resulting massive buyout, was major news because it was so unprecedented. ND quite literally started the era of the massive buyout.
ND was also the buyout king of the sport for about a decade until Auburn and Nebraska passed us a few years ago. Remember the yearly stories about how much we were paying Davie/Willingham/Weis not to coach between 2005 and 2015?
And ND recently made Tommy Rees, of all people, one of the highest-paid, if not the highest paid coordinator in college football.
ND has absolutely been on the leading edge of coaching salary inflation.
The thing that gets me in all of this, and I feel like this is being under discussed on the message boards: it seems pretty clear from reporter postings (but not stories) that Swarbrick waived Kelly’s buyout. That money could have paid for the Ludwig buyout and his first year salary.
Anyway I think it may just be incompetence.
The only thing I could think of is perhaps it is not that simple as that makes it out to be. Perhaps with Kelly’s contract (including the kick backs to fund things within the program) there were clauses that dictated that the buyout money would somehow reimburse Kelly for his contributions and Swarbrick didn’t want to pursue it for something along those lines.
Not sure if that’s the case or not, and def. not trying to excuse what would be inexcusable, just that I have to imagine there is some valid reason why they didn’t pursue some money that they would have otherwise been entitled to.
All that said, it is certainly worth hearing more about from people that would actually know to defend or explain why ND can’t afford to meet a buyout and whether or not they also didn’t enforce their own.
The II writers implied (but never reported out) that they thought it would be unseemly to hold LSU to it when Kelly clearly no longer wanted to be at ND. That always struck me as very stupid – what is the point of buyout clauses if not to make it hurt a little bit?
Again, just assume ND is trying to do things “the right way” and ends up looking (and being!) less-than-competent as a result, and a lot of this makes sense within that framework.
Next time I break my cell phone contract, I’ll tell them it’s “unseemly” to make me pay their penalties.
Doing it the right way would be deferring to the agreed upon contractual terms, but point taken. With the other reports that there was no love lost between Kelly and Swarbrick towards the end, it just makes no sense that they wouldn’t want to get a prize from his new employer on the way out the door.
But, then again, incompetence and making sense of the senseless doesn’t go together. I just have to imagine there is some deeper explanation in play than that surface level reporting that would explain it- but maybe there’s not.
Taking/not taking the buyout would have to be a Jenkins/BoT decision, no? I could see LSU convincing Jenkins that they are a state funded university so please mister priest, sir, take pity on little ol’ us and give us some Christian charity.
Perhaps, but I don’t think an SEC heavyweight balks or even blinks at paying $5 million on a coach’s buyout when it’s a guy they want. That’s simply the established and typical cost of doing business for them.
Agreed. They definitely wouldn’t think twice. They would just get a donor to give $5 mil. Would not come from university operating budget.
According to NDN, there was a trustee willing to pony up the full amount, and Jack said no.
I would take NDN’s supposed “inside information” with an entire shaker of salt. I’m not saying that this is wrong, but their claimed insider info is very often wrong.
It’s Gruden!
I know, I know. But they do have some sources inside the program, so hearsay from around the Gug is better (usually) than hearsay on Twitter
Well, they claim to.
Maybe Swarbrick told Kelly we wouldn’t make him honor his contract if he adopted a terrible fake southern accent on his first public interaction with the fans.
It would explain so much.
Even if ND got a $20mil buyout from LSU, I still don’t think that would be a factor in paying this buyout. ND does not want to set the precedent that they are willing to compete at the highest levels of CFB.
Yes, I assume not wanting to set the OC buyout market is within the “doing it the right way” framework of the administration.
Why that is the right way is beyond me, but that is pretty clearly consistent with how they think.
Off season idea: Can the writers share their top 5 “It didn’t pan out, but I already wrote the freaking article” drafts?
I had the Hartman piece written way in advance and I started sweating on that one.
Brendan used to be famous for pre-writing commit posts on some really high profile misses in recruiting. That comes with the territory sometimes, though.
This buyout hurdle reason sounds like an excuse that echoes around the blogs probably from one writer without attribution. Who knows?
But looking at his coaching position and moves:
Ludwig has almost always coached west of the Rockies, until he left Utah in 2008 to be OC at Kansas State. He abruptly left K-State two months later for Cal. The reason given was “a family matter” wanting to be near family in the Bay area terming it “an ugly deal, but something I had to do.”
He then left Cal after two years for San Diego State explaining his HC was a former OC and Ludwig could get back to running his own system at SD St. No note of family in SD.
Two years later he reunited with Gary Andersen at Wisconsin. He had coached with Andersen for four years at Utah. With Andersen’s abrupt departure after two years at Wisconsin to go back to the Coast at Oregon State, Ludwig may have scrambled for another OC position since Andersen did not hire him at Corvallis.
But Derek Mason who left Stanford for the Vanderbilt HC job, offered an opportunity in 2015. But when Utah was looking for an OC, Ludwig bolted and negotiated one of the highest salaries for OCs in the Pac12.
Family again? He has a son that’s 22 and a daughter that’s 20 and his wife has lived in the MIdwest. He’s secure in Utah. Balking at another cross country move? Wanting total control of his system? Utah has given him a top salary. Did they increase it after he indicated he might leave for ND? Did they offer a “head coach in waiting” type situation?
Did ND want him to commit that secured him from suddenly leaving again or did they cool on him? Avoiding “an ugly deal” as happened in K-State?
Speculations, of. course, but worth considering his coaching changes history.
The buyout stuff came from the original tweet from Pete Thamel saying he was staying at Utah and has been confirmed by basically every beat-writer. At a minimum, that is a major part of why he is not the OC. It is a worse look than if he just turned the job down, so not sure why ND would put it out there if it weren’t true.
A question that keeps coming to mind is “Is ND not willing to pay that for a buyout, or not willing to pay that buyout for Ludwig?” The headline is ND not willing to pay buyout either way but makes a big difference in application.
I can see a scenario where Ludwig said no after visiting campus and ND thought that was embarrassing, so they leaked a story that they thought made them look financially prudent and in control — “Ludwig didn’t turn us down, we turned him down because we don’t pay unseemly buyouts.” But it ended up just making ND look cheap and/or incompetent. The buyout probably is an issue, but I remain skeptical it is the only issue.
Now there’s some smoke out there that Utah and ND are still talking. This is all so weird.
Apparently Ludwig went to a hockey game with Freeman and Swarbrick. So it was pretty publicly understood he had accepted the offer. As opposed to Klein who was kind of in and out secretly except for those who found him on flight tracker.
If you watch the ISD Hit&Hustle* or Power Hour* (the only site I trust outside of here) they make it seem pretty clear that this was the administration refusing to set the market for coordinator buyouts. Which is fairly on brand as well.
I was skeptical of a buyout at first. What’s $5mil to ND? But I don’t think it was the price tag itself that caused the problem. It was more the fact this would essentially be the biggest buyout ever for a coordinator.
*free for anyone. This is the only site where I subscribe to premium info
Good points. To Rudy’s point above, if Ludwig was 35 years old, had helped develop the last two Heisman’s and #1 offenses and somehow was a candidate, would they pay for that? I tend to think Freeman might be able to convince the department/university a little more in that case.
But for a 58-year old solid but “basic” (as E describes above) offense? That juice might not be worth the squeeze, especially when it could change the dynamic of the market and escalate things.
That said, I can see how that perspective is unsatisfying for some.
As Tom Mendoza just tweeted, the process in general could take some notes and be improved. If Freeman didn’t take Ludwig to the hockey game or even bring him into town, they could have avoided a lot of the attention.
Yeah. The biggest issue is that Freeman expected to be able to hire him, but was Mutumboed way too late in the process. All those convos should have happened before Ludwig stepped on a plane, or at least before things got public.
For sure. Not sure how true, but I believe I read Ludwig signed a very recent and very complicated contract with Utah in the prior days/weeks before interviewing. Is it possible or even likely that the Notre Dame athletic department didn’t realize that his contract was so cost prohibitive to move on until they dug in and saw it the exact details later on in the process?
Maybe they started things thinking it would be no big deal or in a certain usual/typical range — only to find when they went to negotiate with Utah to get their man that it turned out it was a whopper of a buyout to a level they were not expecting or prepared for.
(Which also could fit to what Mendoza was tweeting about, basically saying “let’s know what we’re getting into and make sure everything is settled before parading him around”.)
That’s my guess. Reminiscent of O’Leary. Otherwise we willingly wanted to let the entire country know that we are cheap.
I had not seen any independent verification of Thamel’s tweet or statements by either parties. A lot of “reportedly”, “it this is the case”, etc. and conclusions based on that one tweet. Maybe.
Good points on the issue by a NDN poster:
https://ndnation.com/boards/showpost.php?b=football;pid=483077;d=this
I too don’t think Ludwig was a good match for the Irish. Eric made his points. I made mine.
Alabama and Ryan Grubb could not reach an agreement. Grubb received two raises in the last three months from UW. Buyout was $10 mill but they still interviewed despite knowing it.
Georgia will be looking for a new OC now that Todd Monken has taken the same job with the Ravens. They will face the same “obstacles” Alabama and ND have faced.
I brought this up in our writer’s room w/r/t the timeline…
Ludwig reportedly signed a new deal with this large buyout 24 hours before the Tommy Rees to Bama news first leaked. And Rees was gone 24 hours later.
That can’t be coincidental and I think you can infer a million different things from it.
Exactly. Very curious indeed
My understanding is that the smoke about still talking came from a second effort that occurred last night, that has been rebuffed.
well poop
And now Heather Dinich has reported via Twitter that we interviewed Parker yesterday. smh
Hahahaha please kill me
Glad the big drop in ticket demand has convinced the administration that they should focus on putting a quality program on the field and stop nickel and diming the fans oh wait
well anyways off to Ireland
The new OC will be announced as that Irish guy from NBC’s golf channel for maximum brand synergy
It’s going to be Parker promoted to OC, isn’t it?
Feel like it must be. Once again, an exhaustive nationwide search has resulted in an internal hire. What are the odds?!
Well, at least OC and QB coach will be separate.
The good news is that we love underqualified internal promotions for OC, right?
They are Jack’s forte
Oh my. This feels like a post-2016 low for the program, even including last-year Stanford and 2019 Michigan. Big late 90s/early-aughts vibes.
Guidugli actually seems like a pretty solid QB Coach hire. Three years of overlap with Freeman, a decade of college coaching experience, five years as QB coach, including a CFP appearance with lesser talent, and a variety of title boosts showing he was valued in that role.
In a parallel universe where we were only filling the QB coach job I think we’d all be quietly applauding that hire.
Yes in a vacuum he’s an acceptable hire (though it’s a little embarrassing that he’s not good enough to do the job at Wisconsin now that Fickell has a big-boy budget, but he is good enough for ND).
But, in the context that he and Parker are going to be organizing the offense next year, woof real bad.
He’s more qualified than Rees was. Almost a similar resume, but he was a good QB at Cincy.
I know everyone is saying Parker, but there’s still a chance it’s someone else? right? right?
https://footballscoop.com/news/notre-dame-gerad-parker-offensive-coordinator-gino-guidugli
That Parker and Freeman were carpool buddies is almost comical.
Guidugli is arguably more qualified than Rees was was when Rees was made OC, but we’re only making Guidugli the QB coach, albeit one who will sit in on game planning meetings (are there QB coaches who don’t participate at all in game planning, that doesn’t sound right).
Rees had: one year as a GA, one year as OA with the Chargers, three years as QB coach when he was made OC.
Yeah. If we had hired him and say Kotelnicki as OC/OL, I would say we pretty clearly upgraded our coaching staff.
My hope is that since Freeman has worked with him, he knows that he is an ace recruiter. That is one thing all his tag alongs from Cincy have had in common.
I initially read that as we hired the qb coach responsible for Graham Mertz and may have panicked before realizing he had just gotten to Wisconsin.
Parker/Fr Guido Sarducci as co-OCs. Watt OL coach.
Pathetic.
Depending on what you think of Hiestand, this may not be much of a downgrade from last year. But it is in no way an upgrade, and it is very very far away from where we need to be.
SC is laughing at this stuff.
Yeah when Rees left there was some hope that they’d do better next time. Now there’s basically zero hope of that.
Program feels like it’s downshifting from the 7th-10th best program range to somewhere not that high. Really just a question of if it’s 10-15, 15-25, or worse.
”Hey everybody that Gator Bowl win was fun, let’s just run that back every year”
Watt should at least improve the recruiting. And he will be really easy to root for (or will that be worse when it becomes clear he’s in over his head?).
My hope is that these two additions will bump our recruiting up enough to just out talent 10 teams a season while they learn. But they have to be around long enough to actually get returns.
Not sure if recruiting was the issue. Quinn recruited noticeably better ranked players than Heistand, which culminated in the disaster of the 2021 line.
Just to put it out there for you guys to dogpile on: Parker was likely not wholly at fault for WVU’s failure to dominate the Big 12. The year before Parker took over there WVU was the #100 F+ offense and had a losing record and Neal Brown decided to ~promote~ the OC of that offense to Assistant Head Coach.
The offense got nominally better and the Mountaineers made bowl games each year Parker was in charge until he demoted and subsequently left after the second season; following that WVU immediately returned to bowl ineligibility.
A second note, on Parker’s earlier career, he washed out of football as a player at UK due to three separate broken bone incidents and without a powerful benefactor started his coaching career at the high school level. 15 years in he had worked his way into the aforementioned WVU OC job, and now 18 years in is potentially getting a shot at Notre Dame.
Obviously he’s not the established homerun type hire we were hoping for, but the disappointment in losing choice number one is completely separate from how well Parker will do at the job, and other than the spelling of Gerad he really seems like a guy to root for. To the extent possible direct gripes at the people who blocked the hiring of the top choice and try to judge Parker by what comes next.
That was quick. Georgia hired from within – Mike Bobo, currently an Offensive Analyst though he has fourteen years previously with Georgia from 2001-14, including eight years as their OC. Has five years HC experience at Colorado State, and interim HC at South Carolina for three games. Dawg fans are very happy about the promotion from within and familiarity with the system. I imagine the University is happy not having to pay a huge buyout like Alabama and Notre Dame avoided.
Surprisingly, ESPN is now saying ND WAS willing to pay the buyout:
https://www.on3.com/college/notre-dame-fighting-irish/news/college-football-insider-how-talks-fell-apart-between-notre-dame-andy-ludwig-utah-offensive-coordinator-tommy-rees-collin-klein/
One thing that lends credence to this is that Ludwig’s deal at Utah includes a rolling three year guarantee, which is pretty uncommon for coordinators, so even if we were offering a substantial raise on top of paying the buyout we were also likely not offering multiple years or a rolling contract.
Or maybe it’s spin. Which, if it is, would be the smartest thing the administration has done over the last five days.