Tag: Clark Lea

Recruiting: Irish in Georgia Star’s Top 10

Notre Dame recently offered a scholarship to a Georgian safety and have made it into his Top 10 schools going forward.

Although Georgia’s Kaleb Edwards was offered by Brian Kelly and Clark Lea just over two weeks ago, the safety likes what he sees from the Irish and included them in his newly released Top 10 schools.

Edwards is still keeping his options open, as he noted in his tweet, but making his top school list shortly after getting an Irish offer is a good sign going forward. The 6’0” and 195-pound defender does a bit of everything for his Dacula High School team, showing a variety of skills that have plenty of coaches excited for his future on the field.

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The Irish have done a good job recruiting Edwards and are in the mix for a commitment from the safety. The 2021 recruiting class has Illinois’ Justin Walters as the other safety commit, and if Kelly is able to convince Edwards to join, they would make a great pair of prospects to arrive in South Bend next year.

Notre Dame Football: Future Rankings Very Good, Not Great

ESPN released their future college football rankings and Notre Dame checked in high but still behind the usual powers.

ESPN has released their annual college football future rankings for the outlooks of teams over the next few years.  They take rosters, current and future into the equation as well as coaches and their staffs.

Good news for Notre Dame fans is that they appeared in the rankings top ten.

Bad news for Notre Dame fans is that they’re three spots behind where they were a season ago.

Worse news for Notre Dame fans is that the Irish barely check in the top ten, coming in at ninth overall.

Now how did ESPN get to this conclusion and who does Notre Dame fall behind?

Based off of evaluations of quarterbacks, the offense as a whole as well as the defense, ESPN ranks each time by those groups while factoring in coaching stability as well.

Ninth ranked Notre Dame checks in with the seventh overall group at quarterback, ninth best offense and 13th ranked defense.  A couple of things to take away from that:

  1. Based off recruiting numbers Notre Dame is in an incredibly strong place at quarterback compared to about 95% of the country.  That gap between the top five or so percent is significant, here’s to hoping Tyler Buchner, who factors into this, helps bridge that gap.
  2. How much does ESPN like Notre Dame’s 2020 offensive recruits?  Must be a ton with the offense out-ranking the defense in this system, especially when you factor in recent results.
  3. Clark Lea being sought after as a head coach counts against him but that should be a similar thought for almost any program with a proven coordinator.  Brian Kelly’s potential retirement and Tommy Rees’s inexperience at the coordinator spot were also held against Notre Dame here.

The rest of the top ten went as follows:
1. Clemson
2. Ohio State
3. Alabama
4. Georgia
5. LSU
6. Oklahoma
7. Florida
8. Oregon
9. Notre Dame
10. Penn State

If you’re looking at the tiers of college football the last couple of seasons this plays out about as perfectly as you could imagine.  Notre Dame could perhaps have an argument to be ranked above Florida and Oregon but recruiting numbers have favored the others more recently.

Whatever the case, it’s a good, strong showing on this future outlook.  However, it’s still the same five or six schools up top that the rest of the college football world continues to try and chase down.

When Notre Dame DC Lea Speaks, We Listen

Irish defensive coordinator Clark Lea breaks down how he goes about coaching linebackers.

Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator Clark Lea sat down with 247Sports Barton Simmons today and among the topics they discussed was what the Irish are looking for out of their linebacker’s.

In a common theme among the Irish coaching staff, Lea made sure that he reiterated what Brian Kelly preaches all the time, it’s not just about playing football in South Bend for the next 3-5 years, is a lifetime commitment. “These guys come to Notre Dame because they know about backup plans. We want guys that are so focused in every area, so prideful in excelling in all areas, that we really just get to pour into them as football players and make the four year experience the best we can make it.”

Lea also went in depth as to how the staff goes about the academic side of being a member of the Notre Dame Football team. “We want to make sure we have guys that are focused, that are task-orientated, that have the resilience to get done what needs to be done in the classroom, in study table, and in tutoring environments so that everything that we do in coaching them is centered around football.” My biggest take away is the resilience portion, as we all know in football there are going to be trying times at certain points in the season and having the ability to keep their focus and get the job done is paramount in life as well as football.

Lea also went on to talk about one of his star pupils, Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah and what stands out about the linebacker. “I went and watched him play basketball and the twitch was unbelievable. It wasn’t just the ability to jump, I’m watching him crossover dribble in warm-ups and just his head and shoulders, and the way he moved. It was so evident to me he had elite twitch, short area movement skill that through our system developing has only increased.” It seems as if Lea knew early on, Owusu-Koramoah had the skill set to dominate at this level.

It was a great insight in the defensive coordinators mind, and it shows why Lea is one of the best in the country. If he continues developing players like Owusu-Koramoah, school will be knocking at the door with head coaching offers soon. Hopefully, its not too soon.

Shaun Crawford Returning to Notre Dame for Sixth Season

In just 25 career games in five seasons, Crawford has recorded 66 tackles and four interceptions and 1.5 sacks.

Notre Dame received some much-needed good news at the cornerback position Friday when Shaun Crawford announced via video on Twitter that he’ll be returning for a sixth season with the Fighting Irish.

Crawford had said back in September that his fifth year was going to be it for him at Notre Dame but seemed to hint at a return for 2020 once the regular season concluded but official word did come down Friday afternoon.

In just 25 career games in five seasons, Crawford has recorded 66 tackles and four interceptions and 1.5 sacks.

For a secondary that is strong at safety but loses a ton at corner with the departures of Troy Pride, Jr. and Donte Vaughn, keeping Crawford around is a massive win.

Crawford figures to enter the season at one coner position while TaRiq Bracy who played over 400 snaps in 2019 is likely headed to the other.

This move doesn’t make Notre Dame suddenly great at corner but it certainly helps.  Now if Crawford can just catch some good luck and have a healthy, final, sixth season.

Crawford was Notre Dame’s winner of the Pietrosante Award this past season for leadership and courage.

 

Notre Dame Routs Iowa State: 5 Takeaways

I didn’t love everything early but he did do what my pre-game requests were in being able to isolate one of Claypool, Lenzy or Kmet and to exploit an Iowa State defense who didn’t have play-makers that could defend any of those three one-on-one.

There was concern about if Notre Dame would be interested in playing Saturday, how much their heads were in preparing for the Camping World Bowl and attention was only drawn to that this week as Brian Kelly called out his team publicly multiple times for not being focused.

Maybe it was a motivational technique or maybe it was just a lion playing coy, but that in no way, shape or form wound up being how things played out Saturday as Notre Dame steam-rolled Iowa State – to win the Camping World Bowl.

The Fighting Irish finish the year 11-2 have a chance to perhaps finish the year around the top 12, not that any ranking short of one really matters much.

Here are my five takeaways from Saturday’s blowout win.

1:  Clark Lea Owned Matt Campbell

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6

Notre Dame Football: Ole Miss Coaching Search Includes Irish Assistant

a Notre Dame assistant has now been linked to an SEC opening.
And it’s not Clark Lea.

We’ve been on the lookout for star Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea as coaching changes have been happening all around college football. The former Vanderbilt fullback won’t return to his alma mater since the Commodores didn’t make a coaching change but a Notre Dame assistant has now been linked to an SEC opening.

And it’s not Clark Lea.

247Sports is reporting that as of Tuesday night that Notre Dame offensive coordinator Chip Long has emerged as a candidate to fill the Ole Miss head coaching vacancy.

Long has been at Notre Dame since 2017 when he took over as offensive coordinator.

Long began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Louisville in 2007 before stays in various positions at Arkansas, Illinois, Arizona State and Memphis.

Long went to Memphis with Mike Norvell in 2016 and spent one season there before headed to South Bend to call Notre Dame’s offense which he has had great success with, helping guide the Irish to now three-straight 10-win seasons.

My initial thought is that yeah, you hate to break-up something that is working but in all honesty – what is Notre Dame’s offensive identity this year?

There is something to be said with being able to get by somewhat on the fly, but it’s hardly a unit that dominates in any one capacity.

My initial thoughts upon reading this are more “Thank goodness it’s not Lea” than it is “Don’t leave, Chip!”

Vanderbilt Keeping Mason Good News for Notre Dame

What it means for Notre Dame is that defensive coordinator Clark Lea won’t be leaving to take that head coaching vacancy that many feared he would.

Derek Mason is returning to Vanderbilt for a seventh year, Pete Thamel of Yahoo! Sports reported today which means good things for the Notre Dame football program.

You may be asking or saying to yourself “How the heck does it matter, they play Vandy once every 20 years or so, if that, so it’s not like an easy win is coming anytime soon for the Irish…”

Not that the last two times the two met were any walks-in-the-park for Old Notre Dame.

What it means for Notre Dame is that defensive coordinator Clark Lea won’t be leaving to take that head coaching vacancy that many feared he would.

Lea walked onto the football team at Vanderbilt after spending time early in college playing baseball at a couple of smaller schools. He wound up at Notre Dame as linebackers coach in 2017 before taking over the defensive coordinator position a year later.

With the success Lea’s defenses have had at Notre Dame the link to him taking a next step and becoming a head coach, specifically at his alma mater is obvious.

Right now the Notre Dame defense ranks in the top-20 nationally in fewest points per game, fewest yards per play, third down conversion percentage, passing yards per game, completion percentage and yards per pass-attempt.

As frustrating as the run defense was at times this year, you can’t argue the unit overall has produced yet again.

This isn’t an athletic director giving out a “yeah, we love him, he’s our coach” type of line, it’s an actual report that Mason will be back at Vanderbilt, who currently sits 2-8.

Which means Lea should in all-likelihood be back at Notre Dame in 2020, a great thing for the program.