Chris ash has a db group that can do it all

When Notre Dame hired Chris Ash to replace Al Golden as the new defensive coordinator, a lot of analysts were quick to point out Ash’s four year absence from the college football landscape. Ash departed the Jacksonville Jaguars player personnel department to take on his present day task in South Bend, and after getting acclimated to his players on the field, he’s feeling more comfortable with his responsibilities.

“In my past, I’ve always coached a position group, Ash said. “This is the first time I’ve coordinated as a walk-around guy. There’s pros and cons to every situation. The pro here is you can kind of be the head coach of the defense.

“You can go into different meetings,” Ash continued. “ You get to see all the players rather than the ones you coach, outside of the film. I love that I see guys get coached, see who’s listening and responding to coaching. I get to watch drills and help coaches with their individual drills from a different perspective. So, I think there’s a lot of advantages to it.”

Upon his arrival in South Bend, Ash shared that he was coming to run the Notre Dame defense that had already been successful, with a few tweaks in preparation and fundamentals. The focus on fundamentals came from film evaluation, and his coaching experience with secondaries made his evaluations of one of the best units for the Fighting Irish easy to implement during the spring.

“They’re developing and getting better”, Ash explained. ‘ I really like what I see from that group. “We have a long way to go for them to truly master what we do. But man, they’re working hard every single day. I know they can hit. They can run, they can cover. So we can play man and we can play zone.

“That’s where technique helps,” Ash continued. “ Certain fronts go against certain coverages, so there’s things we can do with certain coverages, but also things we can’t do.”

The secondary is still without incoming freshmen like Dallas Golden, Mark Zackery, and transfer safety Jalen Stroman who is working his way back from a shoulder injury, but the spring has seen the emergence of Kennedy Urlacher, Brauntae Johnson, Ben Minich, Luke Talich and Karson Hobbs. Coach Ash seems to be locked on fortifying the back end of his defense similarly to Al Golden’s approach during his first spring.

Courtesy of Notre Dame Football (@ndfootall on IG)