Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly sent a shot across the bow of college football Friday evening when the school announced the hiring of former Cincinnati defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman as Clark Lea’s replacement at the same position.

Big move. Huge.

By itself, this would’ve been huge; Freeman was maybe the most sought-after assistant coach in the country so far this off-season after what he’s done over the past few years, transforming a lower-level Bearcats outfit into a top-5 defense in the nation by yards per play in 2020, and a top-10 one in scoring defense. But the news coming at the end of a day in which reports increasingly indicated that Freeman was headed to LSU (on a 4-year, $10M deal, no less) made the move even sweeter for Irish fans.

(Those reports that Freeman was bayou-bound don’t appear to have been unfounded: Football Scoop even reported that Freeman had gone as far as telling his players he was going to LSU before ND convinced him otherwise.)

It wasn’t just about getting a very highly-regarded coach. It was about what it represented: Brian Kelly is not screwing around. Three years after ND lost Mike Elko to a lateral move to Texas A&M for a pay raise, Kelly beat another team in the richest conference in the country – the reigning national champions, no less – for the services of the top DC on the market.

Whether it was current ND secondary coach Mike Mickens (who worked under Freeman at Cincinnati until the Irish snagged him last off-season) or certain other factors that convinced Freeman to apparently change his mind and come to South Bend, Kelly backed up his exasperated words from the Rose Bowl postgame press conference: The Irish aren’t going to stop knocking at the door separating them from the current reigning standard-bearer programs in America. Moves like this are how you keep knocking.

What will Freeman’s defense look like?

Scheme-wise, word from Cincinnati is that Freeman, like his predecessor Lea, isn’t entirely married to one particular formation and prioritizes versatility. Frankly, that’s the only way to go in today’s college football, where offenses are capable of doing so many different things. And since Lea has been recruiting those kinds of athletes the past few years, it should be a pretty straightforward transition to a new coordinator.

One interesting nugget came from ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg, who indicates that Freeman’s defensive staff might not look much like Lea’s.

That would point to a departure for longtime DL coach Mike Elston, who was considered a favorite to get Lea’s job and has been with Kelly for a long time. Safeties coach Terry Joseph has already left ND for a similar position at Texas, a move The Athletic’s Pete Sampson termed an anticipated one.

One more thing

We’ll see how Freeman’s staff shakes out, but there’s one particular area of college coaching in which Freeman is probably an upgrade over Lea: Recruiting. Freeman is widely considered an ace recruiter, helping the Bearcats reel in the top Group of 5 class in the country to date this season and getting them started on a 2022 class that was ranked (granted, it’s early) 6th in the nation.

It was no coincidence that it only took until the third quoted Brian Kelly sentence in the press release announcing Freeman’s hire for him to specifically bring up recruiting. It’s no secret to Kelly, this fan base, or anyone in the country that ND needs to bring in more elite talent to compete with the current titans of college football. Freeman, who was playing for Ohio State merely 15 years ago (he told the SB Tribune’s Eric Hansen last year that ND was well ahead of anyone else for second place in his recruitment), knows what big-time college football is like and will be able to relate to current players and future ones. Relationship-building was a Lea strength as well, but as someone who lived elite college football, Freeman can offer first-person insights.

(Incidentally, Freeman is the first African-American coordinator in the Kelly era. Better late than never!)

I’ll give the last word to Pete Sampson, who sums this whole hire up in one Tweet.

Is it September 5 yet?