On Wednesday during Marcus Freeman’s ESD press conference he stated that there was no timeline on making a new offensive coordinator hire and that the school would be doing a national search. I joked in the writer’s Slack that if this was anything like his earlier comments about wanting to keep all of the coach’s on staff we’d have a new OC within 24 hours.
I was wrong, it took 48 hours.
On Friday afternoon new broke that Mike Denbrock was returning to Notre Dame as offensive coordinator.
Sources: Mike Denbrock has just informed LSU that he that he will be returning to Notre Dame to be the offensive coordinator for Marcus Freeman.
— Pete Sampson (@PeteSampson_) December 22, 2023
The soon-to-be 60-year old returns to South Bend for the 3rd time having previously coached the offensive tackles and tight ends during the Tyrone Willingham era (2002-04) and then again for the first half of Brian Kelly’s tenure (2010-16) as an assistant and OC before he left to call plays at Cincinnati for Luke Fickell. In 2017, Denbrock and Freeman were on the staff together for the 1st time in the latter’s first season as a defensive coordinator.
Denbrock was lured away to Baton Rouge to reunite with Brian Kelly and is coming off a successful tenure that saw the Tigers finish 9th and 1st in FEI offense over the last 2 seasons, including quarterback Jayden Daniels winning the Heisman in recent weeks.
According to reports, Denbrock had an extension on the table from LSU but had not signed the new deal yet. Under the terms of his current contract, his buyout will be $375,000. Obviously, had he signed a new deal before today a buyout would’ve been a ton more money.
The off-season just got a lot more fun!
Pretty darn cool!
For all the trials and tribulations throughout HCMFs first few years, a big theme I see is he doesnt let the same mistake bite him twice.
Meltdown as DC at end of FSU game 2021…. defense is lockdown rest of year
Marshall/stanford 2022… dominated the lesser teams this year.
End of half mismanagement at end of fiesta bowl taking a knee… much more aggressive in 2023.
Peepee smacked on NSD 2022 with NIL and decommits… 100% sign rate 2023 NSD.
OC hire 2022 being what it was… to this.
Hes taking his lumps, and with every future iteration, theres a new layer to freeman, more nuance, growth, and IMPROVEMENT. A month ago, I legit thought the sky was falling with the WR exodus, stucky, retaining parker, etc. And in the last few weeks how that ship has righted. A bowl win would be a nice optimistic emotional bow, but regardless, freeman exhibits humility and process characteristics that embody his “challenge everything mantra”. Now he has 2 experienced studs at OC/DC, which further frees (pun) him up to maintain the strategic vision of the program, both in game and off the field. Stoked for denbrock, and JAZZED at having such a voracious steward of doing the things in a honest way in freeman.
GO IRISH!!!!
Further, how many discipline related issues have occured on the team under freeman? To my knowledge, 0, and that wasn’t always the case in other coaching regimes, see 2013 fall camp suspensions.
Well yeah we finally stopped recruiting those thugs from Lake Forest, IL.
Really proud of Mike Denbrock for working his way back up to major college football.
I am amazed at the meltdown on ND Nation. Everyone wanted an experienced OC who could be a Golden type. Proven experience. One of the top OCs in the country.
We get that, and they are all we wanted a different one.
Negative Downer nation is both negative and a downer about something related to notre dame football????
A true christmas miracle. I guess the OC of the number 1 offense in CFB wasnt good enough
Apparently, they weren’t happy that he thinks kindly of Kelly.
Maybe they’re angry he has positive emotions towards someone, it would be incongruous to NDNations zeitgeist.
I’M MAD THAT THE OC WON’T BE JOHN GRUDEN AND HE WON’T CALL KELLY A PUSSY AND THEN SLAP SWARBRICK AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE AND I’M NOT WATCHING ANY MORE GAMES BECAUSE THEY START TOO LATE TO MAKE IT TO MORTONS
Hey, any updates on the Swarbrick and USA Women’s gymnastics timeline? I haven’t checked in a little while.
Is it just me, or is it kind of strange that Cincinnati’s playoff staff is getting reassembled at ND vs say, Wisconsin. Makes you wonder if Fickell is the coach that got Cincy into the playoffs, or his assistants and coordinators. I’m sure there is an element on both sides that can be argued, but you know some head coaches (Saban being the prime example) guide their coordinators to their way, and the team will come out OK in the end, others are a product of the talent they have surrounded themselves with and don’t really have the ‘it’ factor to keep a team on constant improvement through various assistants and coordinators. I’m not sure which Freeman is, but I lean towards the former, and I wonder which Fickell is. time will tell, I suppose.
Excited to see how things develop over the summer an into next year. I believe Freeman is guiding this team to a National Championship in the near future.
I think it might say more about working at ND versus working at Wisconsin. Wisconsin is no slouch but it’s definitely in the tier below ND, both historically and contemporaneously. Also I don’t know if this is better since Barry Alvarez left, but Wiscy had a longtime rep for being cheap.
I’ve heard the new AD is being aggressive – look at the Fickell hire and apparently their hockey coach was a poaching. Given how rabid Wisconsin fans are both instate and in Chicagoland, they seem like a program that could get a large moneyed alumni base pretty well mobilized if they work at it.
This rules. At this point, there’s a strong argument to be made that we have top-10 coordinators at both positions, who are well-seasoned (and Denbrock even likes to recruit).
Plus the collective is obviously paying big money to transfers and upperclassmen that stick around, and admissions is being a bit more lenient on undergrad transfers. It’s all coming together. LFG.
Not to be a debbie downer but let’s hope Golden stays. What’s the NFL coaching cycle timeline? It hasn’t really started yet right? We have to hold on to Golden after the NFL regular season ends (and a smaller chance after the NFL playoffs end).
But yes, everything really is coming together. The other positive about Denbrock is that he doesn’t seem like he’s going to want to bolt for a head coaching gig given his age (and his preference to be at ND). Having consistency at one of the coordinator positions – especially the offensive one – for the next handful of years would be amazing for Freeman – especially as a defensive-minded head coach.
Black Monday is in three mondays, then coordinators would follow, so we’re not in the clear.
All fair points, positive and enthusiasm-tempering. Especially agree about Denbrock – from his perspective, he’s probably at the point of his career where he would hope to be one of the top-paid OCs in the game for the next half-decade or so and then retire on top of his game close to home (while making $2M+ a year each year on the way out the door). Obviously it is unlikely to work out perfectly that way, but it’s not implausible to imagine 5 years of Freeman and Denbrock working very well for the program.
Or, alternatively, if it ends up going bad the next couple years, we will have fewer institutional hurdles to blame and will know it’s on Freeman/it’s time to move on. That’s also useful information!
I’m less worried about Golden leaving, I think they’re grooming Mickens for DC and HCMF is well equipped to step in as unofficial co-DC, especially now with Denbrock as OC.
It would obviously suck, but one thing about being successful is that you’re coordinators will move on and move up. The great ones deal well with it, like Saban.
I’m a big Mickens fan. Don’t get me wrong, I would be bummed if Golden left this year, but also excited for MM and hopeful him to DC might give a bump in CB recruiting, and optimistic around who we’d hire for LBs.
The staff we have right now is as excited as I’ve been for one as a whole that I can remember. Everyone is a proven great developer/position coach. There’s a lot of young recruiting potential. And then really good experience at the coordinator level. It’s basically how you’d build a perfect staff for a young HC.
Here’s hoping for another year or two of Golden and Mickens.
Lots of smoke Golden is about to sign a contract extension.
Denbrock got an unprecedented (for ND coordinators) 4-year contract reportedly for $9M. I think he’s sticking.
Well thank god we appear to be learning from our mistakes.
And in regards to Golden, I’ll be holding my breath until NFL hiring season is over.
Yea heard that later that Golden is being offered a big extension. Though I wondered if, while he might have agreed to it in principle, has yet to sign it. Obviously it’s a good thing to even offering it to make it harder for him to leave. But we can rest easy that when he signs it.
New rule from the NCAA – anyone who has less than three years playing in the NFL can go back to playing college ball but have to pay their own way and take a minimum of three credits.