Just minutes before the Super Bowl kicked off on Sunday night Notre Dame received some breaking news. No, it wasn’t the announcement of a new offensive coordinator just yet. Instead, offensive line coach Harry Hiestand is retiring and will no longer be with the Fighting Irish.
The decision isn’t terribly surprising given Hiestand came back to Notre Dame after retiring for the 2020-21 seasons following his 2nd stint with the Chicago Bears. When he was hired last year, these were my comments:
For me, the only reason to bring Harry Hiestand back is if it’s the guy Tommy Rees absolutely wants to work with and Freeman is okay signing off with some of Hiestand’s issues that surrounded his first tenure at Notre Dame.
If we’re only looking at these two candidates I would pick Frye, though. His resume has been really good in recent years, he’s 25 years younger than Hiestand, and in general I’d prefer the vibe of fresh blood under Freeman when we’re already retaining a lot of assistants from the Kelly era. Adding Hiestand kind of feels like a stop-gap and putting off hiring someone else for a year or two.
Although offensive line recruits itself at Notre Dame, as Hiestand can attest, I think it’s important to bring in an assistant that can help out in their region with more than just offensive linemen. Hiestand has always struck me as the type of recruiter who would roll up to a home with some other Irish assistants and wait in the car until they’re done. We don’t need that around anymore.
For the record, Justin Frye ended up heading to Ohio State 5 days after the Irish brought back Hiestand.
Many were wondering if there would be any further changes to the Irish staff and Hiestand was mentioned as a possibility. After Tommy Rees left for Alabama you wonder if that was the nail in the coffin for Hiestand’s future in South Bend with all ties cut to his previous stop at Notre Dame.
Hiestand leaves behind a mix legacy for sure. He was no doubt a strong position coach but his recent recruiting really left a lot to be desired. For example, over his final 2 classes with the Irish (2018 & 2023) Hiestand brought in 9 players with only 1 (Charles Jagusah in the recently signed class) as the lone top recruit in the top 350 of the player rankings.
Where will Notre Dame turn for a new offensive line coach?
According to Tom Loy at Irish Illustrated, the program already has an idea of who will replace Hiestand. Over the weekend, Notre Dame has zeroed in on Utah offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig–is it possible the Utes offensive line coach comes with him?
If so, Jim Harding has been at Utah since 2014 and is currently the assistant head coach, in addition to the offensive line coach. That would be quite the pull for Notre Dame to pry him away from Salt Lake City if Ludwig ends up being the OC, as well.
Think this changes the OC search at all, as now you could bring in an OC/OL (e.g Kotelnicki from KU) and a separate QB coach? Or it would probably already have been under consideration as MF might have had an idea before now?
You’d hope Freeman would have had some clue before today. It’s probably a little late for this to affect the OC job unless Freeman gets turned down again by the Utah OC.
It was said that ND knew for about a week that Hiestand was stepping down, so pretty much as soon as Rees left about the next business day Hiestand told them he was Outtie-5000. Surely no coincidence given the Rees/Hiestand dynamic. Curious timing to drop the news moments before the Super Bowl kick off, but maybe Harry wanted to it to have as little attention as possible.
Chris Watt gave up an on-field position coach job as OLC at Tulane to come back and be the Assistant OLC with Harry this last year. Unless you can get a real homerun hire here I think the OL is in a position where you can promote from within and give Watt a shot at it.
Chris Watt would make a lot of sense.
As far as other hires go, is there any chance of Andy Heck (KC Chiefs OL coach) coming back to ND to be the OL coach?
That would be ideal, but I doubt it. NFL is seen by many as a preferable job to college (no recruiting!) and with where Heck is right now in KC, it doesn’t beat that. He’s got no professional reason to want to leave that setup, unless he had some deep personal goal to coach for the Irish one day. But he’s basically been an NFL coach for 20 years, stable in KC for the last 10 years, probably better off riding that one out.
Yeah, I figured as much but wasn’t sure if anyone closer to KC might have better knowledge. I’d take the stability, too.
Utah’s AHC is the offensive line coach. Andy Ludwig is clearly ND’s target for OC. Maybe something, maybe not.
Harding got the title bump, OLC to AHC, to justify making him a very highly paid position coach. Being willing to spend the cash to coax the two-time defending PAC12 champ OC into a lateral-title move and their OLC into a negative-title move would be impressive.
It’s not an exhaustive list because I don’t know all the OLCs worth knowing in football (also not listing half or more of the NFL OLCs), but people who would seem like a pedal-to-the-metal major get for the program:
Rudolph, Harding, and Bostad would all have to take title-cuts to come, two NFL OLCs, and the 5 OLCs of basically the other 5 best programs in college football. They’re all reaches of one sort or another, especially when you have a pretty good option to promote internally.
For instance I don’t want us to explore getting James Patton off of Chuck Martin’s staff just because he’s an “established” offensive line coach. Just as high a floor and way more upside promoting Watt. No offense to James Patton, who’s a midwest guy, he might even be a ND fan for all I know.
Welp.
Feels like a big few days for CMF!
Freeman’s first year on the job has been wild. The fact that he survived it with a solid record and bowl win, a good recruiting class, fanbase support, and no off-field issues is impressive. The fact that he also got major upgrades at QB and (presumably) OC is very impressive.
I’m optimistic about where we’re headed.
Welp this aged poorly. Eric, please add to your “ACS was wrong” scrapbook.
CMF and company. A reminder that he doesn’t get to make decisions in a vacuum.
Ok, this is not exactly Notre Dame related, HOWEVA, it’s too good not to share and I think it will amuse and give a chuckle.
In Arlington, VA a group of 10-15 neighbors have been waging a war over Pickleball. Apparently it is attracting a rough crowd (not really) and is too raucous for people who live near the park so they’re always petitioning Parks and Rec and the county to get it shut down (or just moved away from them, NIMBY style).
They passed out a flyer that is very reminiscent of a certain ad in a school newspaper type of vibe. Although lacking visual aids to compliment it, but they accuse the pickleball players of bullying children and urinating in public (with a thrown in “GROSS!”), and cry for the non-existent people who rarely used it to play tennis or basketball, so it’s hitting all the right notes. I’d post the image but can’t figure it out. Edit: I could figure it out!
https://www.arlnow.com/2023/02/13/pickleball-fight-escalates-as-opponents-distribute-flyer-accusing-players-of-bullying-children/
This sucks for so many different reasons. Imagine seeing all the junky things going on in the world right now and getting moved enough to try to stop people from playing pickle ball.
This is from the WRCC’s page on the City of Arlington website:
I’d like to organize a group of Open Gym goers and Volleyball players to fight the [email protected] group for bullying them out of their allotted times to use facilities.
Are you a fellow Arlingtonian?
Down the river in Alexandria now but still work and socialize in Arlington a fair bit
I live between Court House and Rosslyn metros. Sounds like there should be a beer in our future
Close to where Jed Bartlet was shot?!?!
My city has a big anti-pickle ball development campaign too! It’s the true scourge of our times. Ruining our cities and public parks. Those empty, cracked tennis courts or other completely unused spaces are much better.
I searched around to see if we had a Fire Weis flyer but no luck.
Just wish those kids would stay inside and play video games.
Oh my god, it’s happening everywhere!!!
https://www.kwqc.com/2023/02/13/addition-pickleball-courts-pits-neighbor-against-neighbor-leads-lawsuits/
I’m going to start apologizing to my children soon about bringing them into this world.
The noise..The noise, noise noise! Sounding like the Grinch haha
But yeah, that sound really drives people bonkers and turns them into Rock House patrons. At least those folks have an excuse
Trouble starts with a T which rhymes with P which stands for Pickleball
Well, so much for the Ludwig/Harding combo.
Would be curious to know if the buyout was truly a deterrent or some kind of cover. Depressing if so, but one of the Utah papers reported that Wittingham was at the SB and didn’t meet with Ludwig until today, so I’m just going to pretend based on the timing that he somehow appealed on him to stay and not ND wouldn’t ante up.
If it’s actually the buyout, it’s super pathetic considering it seems from message board postings by reporters (not that anybody wrote a story about it, which is super weird) that Swarbrick waived a $5M+ buyout for Kelly. Seemed dumb at the time and now seems really dumb.
Also they better not give NBC a sweetheart TV deal after this BS.
Swarbrick just determined to destroy his legacy on his way out the door.
My guess is that it’s a botched cover story for Ludwig just saying no thanks — ND thought that would be embarrassing, so they decided to blame the buyout instead, which is actually more embarrassing. Kevin White level stuff either way.
Totally. I’d way prefer if it was him saying “hey I’m 58, I’m settled in a good job in my home state with a coach/boss that is my friend, just not interested in moving on to a new challenge at this point” over “Notre Dame unwilling to spend a relatively paltry sum to secure best option available”.
Man that is a punch to the gut. ND was willing to spend big, twice, to keep Rees, but not to get Ludwig? I don’t get it. Something seems off here.
Regardless, what a mess.
Pretty irritating screw up inside the athletic office for it to come out like this. I’m still nominally happy to let things play out, but this seems like a stupid interim step regardless of what happens next.