Word leaked out of South Bend today that Wake Forest defensive coordinator Mike Elko has agreed to take the same position at Notre Dame. His name first surfaced among Notre Dame reporters a couple of months ago, which led to his inclusion in 18 Stripes’s mid-season review of defensive coordinator candidates:
He’s not a household name for fans yet, but he’s well thought of within the coaching ranks. In his two-plus years at Wake Forest, he has turned in defensive S&P+ rankings of 37th, 60th, and 27th. Further, he had the Deacons ranked 24th in havoc rate in 2014 and currently has them ranked 18th, so he likes to be disruptive.
Elko’s hire affords Irish fans the opportunity to finally turn the page on one of the most disastrous defensive seasons and tenures in recent memory; like many in the Notre Dame fan base today, we here at 18 Stripes are very enthusiastic about bringing him on board. Before we dig into why that is, though, there are two points eminently worth making, given some of the search commentary and expectations out there:
- Brian Kelly went dramatically outside the family for this hire, bringing in a guy who has neither direct nor indirect connections to him.
- Notre Dame opened up the wallet to make the top candidate an offer he couldn’t refuse, in both dollars and years.
Many assumed that Kelly would hire from within or tab someone he was familiar with, and many also assumed that the administration would be too cheap to lure a top candidate. Today’s news isn’t a guarantee of anything going forward, of course, but at the very least it proves that both of those assumptions were misguided.
Resume
We’re assuming that, unlike our erstwhile out-of-central-casting head coaching hire, everything on Mike Elko’s resume is accurate… Elko earned a BA in history from Penn, where he also played linebacker and won an Ivy League title. He coached linebackers at Stony Brook – not to be confused with O’Leary’s graduate school, NYU-Stony Brook, which doesn’t exist – in 1999 before he went back to Penn to coach the secondary in 2000. In 2001 he served as the US Merchant Marine Academy’s defensive coordinator, before current Wake Forest head man Dave Clawson hired him at Fordham as a defensive assistant in 2002. Elko followed Clawson to Richmond in 2004; interestingly, he left Clawson’s Richmond staff in 2006 to become Hofstra’s defensive coordinator under Dave Cohen, who was his defensive line coach last year at Wake Forest. Stay with us here… Elko joined back up with Clawson at Bowling Green in 2009, this time as his defensive coordinator, and really started to build a name for himself. He followed Clawson again, this time to Wake Forest, in 2014.
Defensive Philosophy
Wake Forest’s defensive depth chart shows a 4-2-5 formation, although that’s a bit too simplistic – probably the best way to describe it is just as an even front. The two linebacker spots, dubbed MIKE and BUCK, feature guys who are “normal” inside linebacker sizes. The other second-level defender is the ROVER, which looks like a hybrid safety/linebacker spot more than a nickel back; the two guys on Wake’s depth chart at that position this year are 6’1″/215 lbs. and 6’3″/225 lbs. From digging through old YouTube videos – I care way too much about this stuff, I think – it’s apparent that Elko values versatility in his linebackers and defensive backs, praising a linebacker’s ability to defend spread offenses in multiple ways and a safety who plays deep, close, and everywhere in between. Obviously being a more flexible defender is better than, well, not, but the point here is that Elko places an emphasis on versatility.
At Bowling Green, Elko’s defense was closer to a 4-4 than a 4-2-5; also, as you might expect, Elko moves in and out of even and odd fronts depending on the situation, which is a further reason not rely too heavily on the 4-2-5 designation. Larz gave us a quick sketch of some notable trends based on a scan of tape from one of Wake Forest’s games this past season; he and downinthebend are working on a more detailed analysis with film cut-ups, so definitely keep an eye out for that. We’re going to stay very high-level here for now.
Larz’s initial impressions are that Elko ran a lot of even-front looks on first and second down, presumably focused on stopping the run, or at least splitting focus on run and pass. On passing downs, odd fronts became more common along with some pressure packages. (This aligns with the advanced stats review coming below.) Short yardage, not surprisingly, involved some bear fronts. Interestingly, Elko would also have a safety creep up towards the line pre-snap but do any of a number of things, from blitzing to dropping into coverage to roving, post-snap.
Back in 2013, Bill Connelly said he could only come up with a “boring” answer as to what set Bowling Green’s excellent defense apart from most: the philosophy was to “be well-coached, smart and aggressive.” After a few seasons of watching a poorly coached, confused, and tentative defense, I think Notre Dame fans would gladly sign up for their own boring answer.
Why We Believe This Was The Right Move
On-Field Results
A huge thank you to our own Mike Bryan – he did the advanced stats breakdown and provided key direction on analysis. As a much-too-rough reminder, S&P+ essentially measures how good you are at winning plays, while FEI measures how good you are at winning drives.
Elko has produced some very effective defenses at Wake Forest and Bowling Green. He dipped a bit from his first year at Bowling Green to his second, but from his second to his fifth and final year there he improved steadily in defensive S&P+ – from 112th, to 74th, to 49th, to 38th. His points-per-drive ranking (better than raw points per game) improved in step, from 88th, to 66th, to 18th, to 10th. He was hurt at Wake in 2015 by a truly horrific offense, but even so his overall results have been good, and his 2016 defense was very good. This year, Wake Forest ranked 29th in defensive S&P+, 37th in defensive FEI, 19th in points per drive, 10th in turnovers, and 13th in sacks. The Deacons had 37 sacks this year, or one fewer than Notre Dame did in 2015 and 2016 combined.
Digging a little deeper into the advanced stats gives some insight into Elko’s defensive personality, as well. In 2014 and 2016 Elko turned in upper-third havoc ranks, which measures how disruptive the defense likes to be – what Bill Connelly calls a personality stat as opposed to an evaluative stat. In all but one of his eight years at Bowling Green and Wake Forest, Elko’s defenses have ranked higher in passing down defensive S&P+ than in total defensive S&P+, often much higher. Per Mike, this is an indicator of an effective bend-but-don’t-break approach – the goal is to hold the line until the opponent gets into an unfavorable down and distance (i.e., a passing down), and then get after it.
Elko’s results at Wake Forest become even more impressive when you consider the fact that a Wake Forest radio guy was giving playbook info and game plans to opponents. In all likelihood not every opponent used the info, and perhaps even not a majority of opponents. We know Louisville did, though, and we can assume at least a couple of other teams did too; if Elko put up good numbers not just at Wake Forest, but at Wake Forest when his opponents knew what was coming…
Institutional Fit
Wake Forest is an excellent academic institution; in the latest US News & World Report rankings, they checked in at #27 (Notre Dame was in a four-way tie for #15 with Vanderbilt, Rice, and Cornell). Elko himself is a Penn football alum, and his coaching resume includes stops at Penn and Fordham – he clearly has more than a cursory understanding of how to mix football and academics. We won’t go so far as to say the culture at Notre Dame is unique in major college football, but it’s unquestionably rare; Elko’s experience in similarly-oriented university cultures certainly will ease his transition to South Bend. Also, per reports, Elko really wanted the Notre Dame job, despite its various challenges. The willingness to embrace the opportunity is an excellent start.
Opponent Familiarity
Over the last three years, Elko has faced all the ACC opponents that Notre Dame will face on a semi-regular basis. We obviously wouldn’t have advocated restricting Notre Dame’s search to ACC candidates, but familiarity with common opponents doesn’t hurt. Perhaps more importantly, Elko is no stranger to the academy triple option, as Wake plays Army every year; and, true to form, his defenses did better over time against it. After giving up 5.8 yards per rush to the Black Knights in 2014, the Deacons held them to 3.6 yards per carry on 118 rushes over the last two seasons. Again, Notre Dame fans would be ecstatic with some boring defensive performances against the academies.
@Never heard of him. Must be low-hanging fruit@
But seriously, given the style and Bill Connelly’s endorsement of Elko teaching smart football, I am excited for this guy.
Thanks for the update Brendan et al!! On paper, this looks like a positive for both ND and Elko. A couple things that have me a bit concerned on a go-forward basis, will be (1) the “buy in” of the players (it had been reported that Elston had some/lots of backing from players in his hunt for DC) and, (2) how much leash will CBK give Elko early on? The second question really relates to concerns I have for the recent departure of Mike Sanford. He seemed (seems) like a real golden boy and yet I don’t think any of us really have an idea if he was given the opportunity to have an impact position on the offence.
Great news for Elko is that he is coming into a program with a lot of potential and some great kids. Good thing for ND is that he seems to have a knack for player development. Go Irish!!
Textual support for your (1) item: http://notredame.247sports.com/Article/Former-Notre-Dame-players-want-Mike-Elston-as-DC-49801868
Thanks RiseUp… I should have included a source. Tip of the hat to you!
Players wanting an interim coach to get the nod is nothing new at ND, any college program or just about any pro or high school program. Especially in college where players chose their school, it just makes sense to reason that they like the coaches they currently play for. So while player wishes are to be considered, concern for that should be far from the most important deciding factor.
We see all the time players either defending a coach on the hot seat (HC or assistants) and calling for retention or asking for an existing coach to be promoted into an open position. How often does that wish come true? My guess is not very frequently and yet you see new coaches making a difference at all levels. Long point made short – player buy-in to a new coach or system really only becomes a problem if the new coach is crap. I don’t think it’s going to be a factor here. Especially with Elston still around.
Players want to play well. They want to win. Some of them have legit dreams of playing pro ball. They aren’t going to endanger that over petty grudges.
Eric tweeted out a link to a ndn discussion on advanced stat and I learned that only 1 really matters. What was Elko’s win loss record?
Kidding, good stuff on the breakdown. Really like this hire
One more note – it’s worth looking at just how much Elko was doing with less at Wake. We all know it’s not exactly a recruiting powerhouse in Winston Salem, but he was working with zero blue chip (4*/5*) players, and a talent composite rank of #69 in the country last year via 247 Sports. By that measure the Deacs were the least talented team in the ACC and 3rd worst P5 team, ahead of only Kansas State (who is that low because JUCO’s that aren’t really factored in) and Kansas. Hopefully should bode well for talent development and doing good things with a talent advantage instead of disadvantage.
It sure looks that way Michael. Thinking out loud… as it was reported that Elston had “player support” going into his interview as DC… does Elston stay? I’ve got to believe that Elko has been given a bit of a mandate in staffing. In my humble opinion, we have some great LB’s currently on the roster and a very healthy potential in commitments. Are we safe?
I would agree that things needed to be changed… especially on defense… but does anyone else have a bad “gut feeling” that there might be more than a few challenges in the next 3 – 5 months?
As a relative neophyte to all things ND Football… the difference between the 2015 and 2016 seasons was team unity. My observations tell me that there have been too many moving parts in the past 11 months and, perhaps, more to come. God, I hope I am wrong. Go Irish!!
Let’s not get too optimistic here. Morgan is pretty good, and the rest are pretty meh.
LOL nd… I’m a cheerleader for sure. I’m just thinking/hoping that with the potential changes in defensive schemes we might see some players reassigned. In particular, I’m thinking Claypool and Daelin Hayes keeping Coney and Morgan. All are great athletes combining speed, skill and size. My optimism? When ND moved Procise to running back in 2015, I thought they were nuts. As I alluded to earlier… what the hell do I know? Cheers!
I’m really curious why people are down-voting this. I have a hard time believing people thinking that assessment is substantively incorrect (the team did go 4-8, after all, and it wasn’t despite awesome linebacker play from guys who were mostly split time or were backups), so are we just supposed to only say nice things here?
I think people are downvoting you because “meh” seems like a pretty harsh assessment of a group of guys who were young and showed some ability, but were put in a very bad position for the first third of the season and spent the rest of the season trying to un-learn a lot of what they had been taught. I think Martini, Coney, and Bilal all looked better than “meh,” so at least I think that assessment is substantively incorrect. I mean, I don’t think you’re a bad person or anything, I just disagree.
I might also venture to guess that you’re getting some automatic downvotes based on generally being one of the more pessimistic voices here. I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, just that people sometimes have conditioned responses. There are a couple of posters here who seem to have ticked someone off, as they get weird downvotes on things from time to time.
OK, that’s like, your opinion man, but I think it’s almost inching out of the realm of opinion into the realm of fact that the play of the linebackers on the roster is closer to “meh” than to “great”. Our best linebacker last year was probably Onwualu, and he’s not coming back. Morgan was pretty good, and the other guys didn’t really help much. Martini had a couple good games and a couple really bad games; Bilal had a couple good plays and a couple bad games; Coney started poorly but improved over the course of the season (so, you know, meh). They’re talented, but they’re not (yet, maybe/hopefully) good or great yet. They should be better next year, but let’s not pretend like we’re talking about a great linebacking corps. None of these guys look like they’re on track to be drafted in the first three rounds of the draft, for example (though I’d say Morgan and Bilal each could based on athleticism and, in Morgan’s case, size).
As to the second paragraph, I think that’s probably right. But (and, disclaimer to avoid any sense of a false equivalence alert: these are not nearly of the same magnitude) in the same manner that NDNation is (way, way, way, way) too negative, I think the commentariat here is too positive. If it’s viewed as a down-vote worthy comment to point out that our linebackers are not (again, not yet at least) great, that’s kind of ridiculous.
I think there’s a little bit of talking past each other here. He didn’t say the play of the linebackers was great, he said he thinks we have some great linebackers on the roster. That’s a big difference. One statement is objectively indefensible, the other is subjectively possible. There’s also a pretty big gap between “great” and “meh,” in which reside some descriptors that would be less likely to raise people’s ire. It’s not your responsibility to manage other people’s ire, of course, but at the same time it’s not all that surprising that people respond to word choice.
I’m going to venture a further guess that had you said, for example, “Morgan is pretty good, and the rest are unproven,” or “Morgan is pretty good, and the rest have been average at best so far,” you wouldn’t have gotten any downvotes. Or maybe you would’ve gotten just one, from that guy, whoever he is.
I’ll leave the positive/negative discussion alone, other than to say thanks for putting us closer to the middle of the spectrum than NDN. We take joy in the things we can…
Also, just to be crystal clear on this point – I don’t want this sidebar construed in any way to mean that we want you to do X or Y when you discuss things here. We seriously welcome every perspective as long as people keep things respectful, and you always do. We need all sides to balance each other out and keep us closer to that middle ground.
I logged in just so I could up-vote this comment…and then plenty of others. Great conversation going. Keep up the good work!
nd… for what it is worth, to this day, I have never down voted a comment from anyone.
Thanks Brendan for your comments. We likely are talking past each other… a bit at least. My point (belief) is that we have some great athletes. Elko appears to have a positive history of developing players. No hard-feelings here. Go Irish!!
I have up-voted both of these comments.
Well, it is the season for giving so take this!! Cheers!
Ha… I almost downvoted you because, as my wife and any number of teachers I’ve had can tell you, I’m a sarcastic jerk by nature. But, as Greenore says, tis the season, so have an upvote instead.
God bless us, every one!
And as everyone knows, despite my advanced years (hence presumably grumpy) and living among the notoriously grumpy French — I am undoubtedly one of the most sunny, optimistic voices on this board.
Hence, I “up commented” all of you and want to extend a personal warm “nice to have you in the fold”to nd09hls12.
Plus on a larger note — awesome analysis, guys!
The buzz sort of reminds me of when Lou got Barry Alvarez on board. Hope we can have a similar magic couple of years!
It reminds me of Michigan’s hiring of Don Brown last year from Boston College. Relatively under the radar coach that led BC’s defense to be one of the top defenses in the nation. BC did not have a bunch of 4/5* recruits either but were well coached , disciplined, and competed at an elite level. I hope Elko can bring a similar style of coaching as well because our player development and fundamentals have been lacking recently.
I don’t know anything about him. He isn’t the big name I wanted but he is the hire I expected. I just hope he can teach and he can recruit because that’s what we need more than anything.
He’s a relatively big name in the profession though – Oregon was definitely interested and Florida probably would’ve gotten involved if we hadn’t made headway with him so quickly. You don’t get a guy like Aranda, Venables or Chavis. You get a guy that looks like he might be them and try to hold onto him. That’s what we have in Elko.
I think it’s an excellent hire. My first choice would’ve been Alex Grinch, but Elko was 1B and he’s certainly no consolation prize.
Good to know you don’t feel like your Christmas was stolen just because you didn’t get your first choice.
Would you say your heart grew 3 sizes that day that you saw Elko was picked instead?
Encouraging hire for all the reasons stated above. Not a slam dunk but the oppprtunity was there to take the easy route with Elston and instead Kelly made the right call.
Man with Kelly already on thin ice, I couldn’t imagine how he’d be roasted by making an internal hire of a long-time assistant. Fresh blood and new eyes were needed, I agree he made the right call.
Though it would have been great to schadenfreude to see the NDN crowd lose their marbles with a totally unacceptable hire for them. Maybe they’d have to resort to drastic measures to really get their message across. Only one solution left after the failed newspaper ad: hiring a plane with a banner behind it to fly over campus a few times. Really pull all the stops out this time.
Vote Bilal for Rover.
Doing a quick once-over of the roster, I had a similar thought. Though you have to figure Tranquil might figure here as well. It’s probably a role similar to the one he played against GT in 2015. He’s much better in the box versus as a true cover safety where he is a liability, but was forced into that spot this year.
This could also ultimately be a good spot for Spencer Perry with a little more bulk. And just thinking out loud, since everybody wants to see Claypool’s athleticism on defense, it might be an option for him, as well. Though I’m intrigued at the prospect of a combination of him and Alize Jones working in tandem out of some combination of TE, slot and H-back roles. Imagine the match-up problems.
Had the exact same thoughts re: Drue. This could be just what he needs.
<3
Good analysis, seems like a pretty solid hire, and agree with the above that BK should be commended for not doing the easy thing and just hiring Elston.
However (Debbie Downer time): I think it’s a strategic mistake for ND to hire somebody who runs anything other than a 3-4. Our biggest recruiting issues come on the defensive line, and the easiest way to deal with that is to play fewer defensive linemen. The one DL position we don’t seem to have as much trouble recruiting is big DEs, which you basically get to play two of in a 3-4. I’m not super enthusiastic about ND playing a scheme with 4 defensive linemen and basically 3 safeties.
Not knowing a ton about defensive personnel packages, wasn’t Diaco’s 3-4 heavily reliant on finding the perfect nose tackle? That’d be a risk when you’re looking to make a decent improvement right away. Hopefully Elko’s experience coaching up 3-stars comes in handy.
I’m by no means an expert, but I think the answer to your question is yes. However (again, somebody can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), I think the main job is to eat space. I think ND would have less trouble signing one big dude a year and hoping that one pans out every three years instead of trying and constantly failing to find a good pass rushing weak-side DE. For example, next year we could run out Cage as our main DT surrounded by Tillery and Jay Hayes, and then have an LB corps of Martini/Morgan/Bilal/Coney (with Daelin Hayes coming in on pass rush downs as an OLB). Even though I said above that our LBs are mostly meh, that’s probably our best possible defensive front seven, because our d-line is going to be much worse than meh next year unless Elko works miracles.
Diaco’s version of the 3-4 was exceptionally specific on what type of player was needed for each position. That doesn’t necessarily mean all 3-4 variants have those same issues. War daddy NT’s are really hard to come by, only a handful in any given recruiting class (and ND doesn’t land many of them besides Louis Nix) so many of us felt that was a limiting factor for Diaco’s scheme. Perhaps it’s not as important for other 3-4 versions. I feel like it’s easier to find LB’s than DL’s in general, but it’s easier to find DL who fit in a 4-down set a lot easier than a big space eater NT.
Good points all. I’d also add that I think it’s a little bit of a mistake to pigeon-hole Elko as a 4-2-5 guy or a 4-4 guy – he mixes things up pretty regularly, as you’ll see in larz’s more detailed post. As noted above he’ll go into odd fronts depending on down and distance, and even when he’s in an even front he often has one end standing up and acting more like a 3-4 OLB.
Daelin Hayes should do really, really well in this defense. He’s perfect for what Elko does with that outside rusher.
I’m watching for Larz’ upcoming article on Elko closer than I’m watching Amazon shipping updates or NORAD Santa Tracker this week. I really hope it gets here by Christmas.
Like Matt says, the complaint when we had Diaco was that we had too much trouble recruiting war daddies to play the nose, and too reliant on getting two big athletic guys to be inside linebackers. The realty is that whatever scheme we would use there would be positions we’d have trouble recruiting, and also that plenty of teams with bigger talent problems than we have run even fronts with success.
I’m more concerned about the DC’s ability to teach and build a cohesive defensive identity than with a particular formation. I think Elko hits big on both of those areas.
Hire good coaches, not schemes.
It’s college. Good coaches turn mediocre raw talent into excellent players all the time.
I want a 5x thumbs-up button for this.
I 100% agree as well. Solid coaching of fundamentals is way more important at this level.
I like it.
Sweet action!
Now please excuse me while I refill my Kool-Aid…darn cup’s been empty a couple months.
I applaud this hire and look forward to demanding his firing after the defense gives up a first down in the opener next year.
That’s utterly ridiculous.
That will happen on the opponents first play when a missed tackle goes for 8 yards.
If WINbush lights it up in the spring game we’ll know this was a FAIL.
If he doesn’t FIRE KELLY!
That’s overly conservative, it’s happening before the first play when Tillery jumps offsides.
Touché
Great write-up from our buddy Jamie U over at ISD – and it’s free, which should please all you cheap bastards who haven’t anted up yet on your 18S subscriptions:
http://irishsportsdaily.com/s/1420/versatility-vital-to-elkos-scheme/1
Thanks for the link Brendan, that was a good write-up.
Ahh hell. I inadvertently sent my check to the old address at OFD. No doubt by now they’ve spent it all on some fresh flat bill ND caps and 40s of Olde English.
I love Jamie’s writing. That was a great analysis.
Waddya mean? I sent my $200 membership fee to that nice Nigerian prince you guys hired to manage accounts.
Obligatory shout-out for defensive intensity developed at Penn:
PS – KG, F&&* Princeton!
2016 Ivy League Champs**, yo.
**Yes, yes, Princeton and Penn are listed as “Co-Champs” because the Ivy League is silly and ignored that Princeton beat Penn 28-0, which in any other world would be a tie-breaker when two teams have identical conference records. .
Let’s not forget Gifford went to USC. Nice pop Chuck.
Brian Polian apparently coming back as ST Coordinator. I remember him being known as a better recruiter than coach under Weis, but he’s also gotten a chance to work for Harbaugh, Shaw, and Sumlin before four seasons as the head guy at Nevada. Another solid pick-up.
http://notredame.247sports.com/Article/Brian-Polian-to-make-Notre-Dame-return-as-assistant-coach-49846886
Man, I’m starting to get excited for next season. I know I’m the eternal optimist, but I just can’t help it. I love this team, and I want to see good things happen for them. Just following the progress of putting the staff and roster together starts getting me going.
Same here. Look, this season was awful and nobody’s happy about it but this is the time we all get to look forward and think about something ND football-related that isn’t 4-8. If you can’t enjoy the good things (nationally respected DC hire, still a solid recruiting class) without constantly harping on the failures, I’m not sure what the point is of being a fan.
I am very pleased with this hire. Wake relies on their defense to win games, the offense needs to improve to get to meh. They have won games each of the last three years solely based on kicking more field goals than their opponent.
They pretty much bottled up our offense two years ago. Yes, there was the 93 yard run, but for the most part we had difficulty moving the ball all day. If they had an offense, we might have lost that game.
As others have pointed out, they have less talent than any P5 program not based in Kansas. My son is a Wake alum, and while they rank at the bottom of the ACC in recruiting rankings, he tells me that each class there under Clawson and Elko has been better than any prior class in Wake history and each class has been better than the one before it. As a result, I tend to think he will be a good recruiter. I have a feeling he won’t be a gimmick recruiter like Diaco or Harbaugh, but I think he will do a good job on that score. Remember though that he has had consistent success playing a variety of teams over a number of years using athletes that were not even recruited by ND. Thus, the fact that we may not have any depth at DT will be more of a challenge to be overcome than a fatal flaw.
He gets a lot out of a little, and his defenses play well. They play hard, they get off the damn field. He shows a lot of looks, but I think underneath the looks it is relatively simple. BVG had a lot of complexity under those looks and the players had to constantly and instantaneously react or be out of position. I don’t think Elko has that complexity. My impression is that the scheme will fit the players, and we won’t once hear how we don’t have the players to fit his scheme. Given where we are in Kelly’s coaching life expectancy, we need that.
He is definitely taking a step up, but that is what coaches do. The better known names weren’t leaving their current gigs.
My gut tells me that this hire coupled with Polian, a former recruiting coordinator at ND, means that Kelly expects Mike Elston to leave, or is at least willing to accept that. I agree that our LB play, where Elston coaches, has been underwhelming. A lot of that was BVG scheme, but we didn’t see a lot of Bilal or Barajas. Really, very little of anyone behind the starters in any of the BVG years or in the post BVG nine games. That is an indictment, to me, of player development and their position coach.
Scuttlebutt is actually that Elston will stay on staff and move to DL, while Elko will bring along Clark Lea from Wake to coach LBs. Make of that what you will… There are still a few staff dominoes to fall on both sides of the ball as well as off the field. Going to be a very interesting week or so.
So…that would mean Keith Gilmore is gone. if that’s true? And is Lea the only guy we think Elko is bringing in? Probably hard to know just yet.
Interesting. From reading his history somewhere, I would have thought that he had a tie to the DL coach that predated Clawson. No matter, all conjecture.
I think there are a few more dominoes. I am hoping Lyght stays. HIs corners were a lot better once BVG was gone. I don’t think Lyght knew how to react to what BVG did. Also, I think when we started playing the freshmen corners, we had much better athletes on the field.
I have watched a lot of Wake the last couple of years, and they are adequate in the front 4, but I have thought their back 7 were surprisingly good. Elko should be able to do a lot with the step up in athlete quality.
I was at the Wake-Syracuse game this year. Much like ND-NCST, you can’t tell much because of the weather. It did break toward the end though, and their D was strong. They looked much more comfortable stuffing Syracuse than we did. To the extent it matters, at least for that game, he was coaching from the booth.
For what it’s worth, Wake Forest had a cornerback, Kevin Johnson, selected number 16 overall in the 2015 draft, by the Houston Texans.
That obviously speaks to the kid’s talent and Wake’s defensive backs coach as well as Elko, but Elko clearly put Johnson in the right place in his scheme to succeed, unlike, for example, Russell under BVG, whose prodigious athleticism never seemed fully realized on the field after we stopped playing (what I think was) Diaco’s flavor of zone coverage.
Dave Cohen, Wake’s DL coach, worked with Clawson at Albany in 1989-90 and again at Fordham in the early 2000s, when he was DC and Elko was a defensive assistant. Later, when Cohen was the head coach of Hofstra, he hired Elko as his defensive coordinator. Fast forward another few years, after Cohen was fired as DC at Rutgers, and Clawson and Elko picked him up as their DL coach at Wake.
This is why, by the way, I never thought it was so odd that Kelly keeps some guys around that he knows – every coach does it. Kelly’s hire history at ND has been about 50/50 between guys with and without connections to him, despite the opinion held of him in certain areas.
Is it weird that the lede photo makes him look like a double for Stepbrothers? Did we go from Uncle Rico to James Reilly?
Sarkisian is the new OC at Bama.
Embarrassed to admit this, but in the ND turmoil I wondered if he had a place.
Hate ‘Bama, but I hope Steve has got past his demons. Alcohol is one hell of a drug. Guessing that the USC legal reps are pretty pleased as well. I hate USC more than I hate ‘Bama. Sincerely, wish Steve all the best… with a few losses for the Tide.
Longo has (appropriately) been demoted (http://irish.nbcsports.com/2016/12/17/paul-longo-out-as-notre-dames-director-of-football-strength-and-conditioning/). I do have to say, I was on the “fire Kelly” bandwagon, but the right moves are being made this offseason. We’ll likely never have any way of knowing, of course, but it would be fascinating to find out who is most behind these moves (i.e., Kelly or Swarbrick – which, of course, it may be different for any given move). It’s quite possible it’s all Kelly, though: there were rumors that other assistant coaches were telling players to not be shy about telling Kelly what they thought of Longo (in a bad way), so perhaps that got through.
Short of firing Kelly, this was the wish-list for the offseason:
Top new DC, hired from outside BK’s coaching tree
New ST coordinator
New S&C coach (I don’t understand this one as much, but ok)
All three are happening. Whether its because the head coach made these decisions strictly on his own, felt pressure from above, or something in between, credit where its due. If next season fails to meet expectations, its not because there wasn’t a willingness to try something new.
I’m surprised by the Longo move (Kelly’s BF). There was talk that the players were unhappy with him and told Kelly so in season ending meetings. Perhaps his approach was wearing thin with them, more so than his methods were wrong.
I don’t know about his approach but his results are why he was removed. It should have been clear to everyone that their was a major issue with S and C. It had to happen and I know it was a difficult decision for BK.
I like what Kelly is doing. I don’t know a thing about our new DC but I have not found one person who has had anything negative to say about him. From everything I have seen/read he is a good teacher. I just hope he is a good recruiter.
Also, having Polian on this staff will do wonders for recruiting and I think he was a homerun hire for BK as well.