BREAKING: Notre Dame hires Marcus Freeman as defensive coordinator

Notre Dame has its new defensive coordinator and the hiring couldn’t have been better.

Notre Dame has landed their man as highly sought after defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman is headed to South Bend.

Earlier tonight there were reports that Freeman was on his way, but word has now been made official by the University of Notre Dame.

In addition to calling the defense, Freeman will also coach the linebackers, exactly like Clark Lea did for the last three seasons before taking the Vanderbilt head coaching job in December.

Freeman comes from Cincinnati where he was the defensive coordinator since January of 2017.  This past season Freeman’s defense was one of the nation’s very best, ranking 13th in all of college football in terms of yards allowed.

Freeman was a key cog for a Cincinnati football program that has gone 31-6 over the last three seasons combined.  The Bearcats were within seconds of upsetting Georgia in this year’s Peach Bowl as well, a feat that would have landed them a perfect season.

Freeman, a former Ohio State linebacker, began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at his alma mater in 2010 before coaching the linebackers at Kent State in 2011 and 2012.

He then spent four years as Purdue’s linebackers coach before taking the coordinator job at Cincinnati in January of 2017.

Brian Kelly and Notre Dame knocked it out of the park with this hiring.

Replacing Clark Lea is a grand task as he’s been seen as one of the nation’s best assistant coaches for a couple of years now and the Irish were able to reel in the biggest available name on the market to replace him.

Freeman rejoins Notre Dame cornerbacks coach Mike Mickens as Mickens coached the same position at Cincinnati from 2018-2019 before joining Kelly’s staff last off-season.

Notre Dame beat out LSU who were also in hot pursuit of Freeman.