Almost since Mike Elko’s name surfaced as an interviewee for the Notre Dame’s vacant defensive coordinator position, it has been rumored that Clark Lea would follow him from Winston-Salem to South Bend. Lea coached the linebackers at Wake and is expected to do the same at Notre Dame. Lea’s background, both as a player and a coach, is very interesting, with work at stops relevant to Notre Dame and work with some well-respected defensive minds. As a player, he won a NAIA baseball championship at Birmingham-Southern before transferring to Vanderbilt, where he was a three-time football letterman and two-time All-SEC Academic Team selection. He spent two years as a graduate assistant at UCLA, then two years at South Dakota State, then returned to UCLA in 2009 under head coach Rick Neuheisel and defensive coordinator Chuck Bullough. He joined Elko’s Bowling Green staff in 2012, then headed to Syracuse the next year to learn under former Stanford defensive coordinator Scott Shafer. After Shafer was fired, Lea rejoined Elko in Wake Forest this year to resounding results.
Wake Forest linebackers this year accounted for 40.5 tackles for loss, led by senior Marquel Lee’s 20 (good for a tie for tenth nationally). Notre Dame linebackers, in contrast, recorded just 29 TFLs on the season, paced by James Onwualu’s 11.5. According to 247 Lea is already on campus and working, which is obviously great to hear with the recruiting dead period ending in a few days. Speaking of which… I don’t know specifics of Lea’s reputation as a recruiter, but he’s been involved with three of Wake Forest’s seven highest-rated commits in this class and pulled in some solid talent at Syracuse as well. At the very least he seems to be active on the trail; add in that he’s young and, as evidenced by his time at Vandy, he’s smart, and he has what he needs to be a successful recruiter for Notre Dame.
It’s also comforting to know that Elko will implement the dramatic shift in Notre Dame’s defensive scheme with someone who is already very familiar with his own ideas of how to get things done. Lea will have excellent material to work with in Nyles Morgan, Asmar Bilal, Te’Von Coney, Greer Martini, and the rest of the bunch. Morgan in particular will have a lot to prove to NFL scouts entering his final year, just as Elko and Lea will have a lot to prove to the Notre Dame faithful. Here’s hoping that common interests and common needs will lead to common success.
Finally, it’s worth noting here that the addition of Clark Lea in the linebacker coach role would necessitate a change of assignment for current Irish linebacker coach Mike Elston. The most natural move seems to be for Elston to slide back to defensive line, which he coached at Notre Dame from 2010-2014 and for stretches at Eastern Michigan, Central Michigan, and Cincinnati. That in turn would seem to leave current defensive line coach Keith Gilmore as the man without a country. All of this is just so many tea leaves at this point, but it seems by far to be the most likely scenario in play.
Is he the one in the Wake Forest shirt? Who’s the guy in the GT shirt? I just assumed he had a stop at GT until I read, and now I’m really confused.
Ha… Yeah, tlndma is right. That’s actually a high school coach on the left – it’s a Twitter picture that guy posted from one of Lea’s recruiting visits. I found a lot more on-field pictures of Lea at Syracuse than I did of Lea at Wake; the only Wake pictures I could really find were official headshots, which are pretty stiff.
By the way, Lea was a fullback at Vandy. Should warm the cockles of a certain subset of our fan base.
He has an EXCELLENT haircut.
@DOES HE HAVE ANY ELIGIBILTY LEFT? GRAD TRANSFER?@
You keep your hands off of my “cockles”.
Lea is guy on right.
Mmmmm, fullbacks.
So… Ed Warriner is going to be the OL coach at Minnesota….
http://minnesota.247sports.com/Board/59465/Contents/Report-PJ-Snags-New-OL-Coach-50447823
Why leave OSU?
Sounds like he wanted to be the only OC and didn’t like it when Urban brought in Wilson
If he wanted to be the OC, and so left when he wouldn’t be the OC, why would he then take an Offensive Line coach job? Why wouldn’t he leave for another OC position? Or at least wait and stay until one opened up?
I think he caught some heat for the performance and play calling in the Clemson game and didn’t appreciate it too much. He could also be a pretty prickly guy – he didn’t split with Kelly on good terms, and it doesn’t look like he’s splitting with Meyer on good terms.
Evidently the spanking their OL received from Clemson’s front 7 didn’t sit well with Urbs.
http://www.ndinsider.com/recruiting/notre-dame-parts-ways-with-cornerback-commit-elijah-hicks/article_94e381ec-d79a-11e6-bef3-f7b08f77e6d6.html
This seems real dumb. By this logic, we should have fired Kelly after he interviewed with the Eagles.
I don’t think it’s dumb at all. The kid’s heart is clearly not with the Irish. I don’t like losing recruits at all but it looks like the team had no choice. There are school’s out there who will drop a kid for taking another visit after giving his verbal.
This staff needs to come together and have a strong finish. From everything I am hearing Elko has been hitting the recruiting trail hard. He has probably done more recruiting in a month than BVG did his entire time at Notre Dame.
With four and five stars at this point and how little apparent interest there are from that cohort remaining in the 2017 class, we should be in “beggars can’t be choosers” mode.
Were we holding a spot for a different coach that Kelly caused us to lose? I guess you have a point, but it kind of seems like you’re just reaching for something to bash Kelly with. There’s plenty out there without this.
It does seem silly if it is simply based on the twitter thing, but there’s probably more to it. Not least maybe that Elko wants a different kind of player?
Hicks is 6-0 185. The corner we just offered is 6-0 190. So, no, doesn’t seem like it.
Based on what has since come out (that he’s going to early enroll at Cal), it seems like the NDInsider story just has the ND coaches spin on it. Kind of a “you’re not leaving; you’re fired!” type of thing.
That was my first thought…two corners in two days right after Elko gets to town? They may end up being lower ranked guys, but maybe Elko has some specific skillsets in mind for his corners.
The kid left for a team without a head coach. That leads me to believe it’s not the turnover at ND. More likely he wants to stay closer to home.
His Grandma must be sick.
They won’t be without a coach for long. Chip Kelly or Les Miles will be named HC soon. Probably Chip Kelly.
Based on stuff I’ve read elsewhere, this was neither an “if you’re looking, we’re looking” situation, nor a “you can’t quit, you’re fired” situation. The staff reportedly learned something in the last few days that didn’t sit well with them and told him no mas. Piecing together various bits and pieces from around, I think he had intended to flip to Cal for quite some time, possibly since his official visit, and didn’t tell the Notre Dame staff.
He was never mentioned as an early enrollee for us – the only five commits that have been are Aaron Banks, Robert Hainsey, CJ Holmes, Isaiah Robertson, and Brock Wright – and yet here he is, graduating high school early. My guess is that the staff got wind of his early graduation just recently and knew something was up, so they talked to him and said enough is enough. Once that talk happened, he dropped any pretense of being committed and let people know he was going to Cal.
I guess we could quibble over whether this is a “you can’t quit” situation or not, but this is not nearly as cut and dried as a normal decommitment. Honestly, I think maybe he didn’t want to talk about it or something and was just going to show up at Cal and enroll.
That makes far more sense. We know kids do weird stuff and in general it is hard to say no to people (clearly something he needs to work on). So it’s not so much ND telling him to get lost but hey we found out you don’t want to be here so stop pretending and go do what you want to.
Elko has a lot of work to do with the corners decommitting.
I think it’s pretty telling that Elko has been throwing out DB and DL offers like crazy since he was hired. Two more DB offers yesterday and today, in fact, to Louisville commit Tre Norwood and Tennessee commit Terrell Bailey. It’s getting hard to keep track. No doubt he looked at the roster and the class, said “WTF?,” and started picking out some guys.
Note that I’m not necessarily dinging the guys on the roster by saying that – it’s more about quantity than quality, especially at DB. We need legitimate bodies everywhere but LB.
Unless Elko or Lea has a relationship with these new kids, I find it hard to see how we are going to flip kids in two weeks. But there is always hope.
Wellll… Closer to three weeks, actually. Elko and Long have already been talking to a ton of kids and both are going to be on the road tomorrow when the dead period ends. I have no idea what to expect for this stretch run, honestly, but I do think it’s going to be nuts. Buckle up.
What positions are we/should we be targeting? Depending on 5th years we have like 4-5 spots left in the class.
It seems from your reports that the two 4* LB’s are some of the best bets to commit. We are also really low on WR’s – 7 – esp. for Kelly who has typically had like 10 at a minimum. In the secondary we could probably use 1 more safety and 1 corner (for a total of 8 each but of course that depends on if guys move around – like Tranquil, Perry, Morgan – all guys who could move to LB/Rover.
So how do we have room for more DL? I know some of this is based on who is available. So one year you may take extra LB’s because those are the guys who want to come. But how do you see this playing out with the final spots?
I think we’ll have room for whatever we want, honestly. Not all fifth years will return, and no doubt there will be a transfer or two or a medical situation in the spring. Not saying this will actually happen, but I think we could comfortably add 7-8 kids in this class. Maybe even a couple more than that. So if the staff wants extra at any position, no problem.
I’d like to add 2-3 DBs, 2-3 WRs, and 2 DL. That would be one hell of a finish. Anyone else is gravy.
What about those 2 4* LB’s that were “warm”? Simmons and someone? Would we only take 1?
Not sure where we stand with them – either would probably be interested if we push, Simmons probably more so than Brooks, but I’m not sure if we will really go after them.
Well that would make sense as a matter of timeline and result… but seems really odd (i.e., why not just back off your commitment publicly?). The whole “committed” “hard commit” “soft commit” “committed but looking” etc. without anything backing up the commitment other than your word can lead to some weird situations, though. Crooting is weird.
I think I’d like all this staff shakeup if I had any confidence in the head of the program