What Notre Dame hiring Ja'Juan Seider and Chris Ash says about Marcus Freeman

New York Times

28-02-2025

Ja'Juan Seider gave Notre Dame's running backs an assignment this week. The incoming assistant wanted to know what holes Jeremiyah Love, Jadarian Price and Aneyas Williams saw in their games, weaknesses that needed to be filled during spring ball.
Notre Dame's new running backs coach asked for three to five examples from each — nothing was too big, nothing was too small. If the backs were about to hear from a new teacher, Seider wanted them to help write the lesson plans.
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'You're only gonna know your blind spots if you recognize them and you own them,' Seider said.
The sentiment applies to more than players. It's relevant for Marcus Freeman, too.
This offseason wasn't the first time Notre Dame's head coach had to remake his coaching staff, both in fit for the program and how it suits him. After inheriting part of his first staff, Freeman has been able to put more than fingerprints on Notre Dame's coaching roster ever since. Those arranged marriages of offensive coordinator Tommy Rees and offensive line coach Harry Hiestand — both top coaches in their own right — have evolved into Mike Denbrock and Joe Rudolph. Taking a chance on Chansi Stuckey has grown into Mike Brown's leading the receivers. One special teams ace (Brian Mason) begat another (Marty Biagi).
Many of those changes were driven by prior knowledge, with Freeman leaning hard into previous connections from his time under Luke Fickell. Of Notre Dame's 10 assistants, half worked with Freeman at Cincinnati. There is no better indicator to Freeman about how a coach will fit Notre Dame than his experience working with them.
That gets Notre Dame to Seider and defensive coordinator Chris Ash, both unveiled Wednesday. Freeman simply can't pick from the Cincinnati tree anymore, both because it's running out of fruit and because the pace of Notre Dame's staff turnover figures to continue, especially if College Football Playoff runs become the norm.
The price of success is the rest of college football (or the NFL) wanting a piece of it. It's on Freeman to be ready for it and able to expand his coaching network beyond the familiar.
So far, so good.
Freeman had to look harder to round out this staff this time, a reality that figures to be standard operating procedure from here. But if how to hire a staff was a Freeman blind spot when he got the Notre Dame job, it feels like he has improved his vision ever since. From top to bottom, Freeman's third staff felt better than his first at every position. The fourth has a tough act to follow.
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In Ash, it feels like Notre Dame hired Al Golden-lite, a fired former college head coach who has been working his way back up the food chain in the NFL since. He has had defensive coordinator experience at Texas, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Arkansas with the stop in Austin not that long ago. Still, Golden's resume was better coming into Notre Dame's than Ash's, thanks to helping lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl. Golden's head-coaching experience was better too, from resurrecting Temple to at least keeping Miami above water. That's all a big improvement from Ash's going 8-32 at Rutgers.
Still, head-coaching experience on staff probably matters less to Freeman now than it did when he hired Golden. Notre Dame's coach is infinitely more experienced now, able to confidently call his shots. That doesn't mean Ash's background doesn't matter. It just matters less.
'We never really discussed (my head-coaching experience) a whole lot,' Ash said. 'I do think my experience as a head coach has made me a better assistant coach. I understand what the head coach wants and how to help the head with the problems with my players or my side of the ball.'
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Seider's lateral move from Penn State, leaving one of the sport's elite running backs groups to lead another, is another example of Freeman's spreading his staff-building wings. If Ash came recommended by Urban Meyer, Seider came with approval from former offensive coordinator Gerad Parker. The coach at Troy worked with Seider at Marshall and Penn State. Few know what works for Freeman better.
This is what expanding the coaching tree looks like for Freeman, the ability to find coaches who feel like extended family instead of always hiring coaches who are in his immediate circle.
It says something that Seider sees Freeman as a kindred spirit even if the two have never worked together. Maybe that's not all that different than when Deland McCullough reached out about joining Freeman's first staff, intrigued enough by Freeman's introductory news conference that he wondered whether Notre Dame's new coach was what the sport's future looked like. Seider sees it, too, leaving James Franklin after seven seasons.
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'Sometimes I feel like when I'm talking to (Freeman), I'm talking to myself,' Seider said. 'It was time to challenge yourself, to do something different.'
There are no guarantees the pieces of Notre Dame's next coaching staff will fit together as well as the last one, a staff that seemed to click publicly and privately as the Irish made that run to the national championship game. But in the same way, so many of Freeman's calls seemed to work last season. Whether that was a fake punt, a depth chart switch or even how Notre Dame rebounded from losing to Northern Illinois, it feels like Freeman has won back the benefit of the doubt on staff building.
And it feels distinctly Freeman how it all has been handled.
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Notre Dame hiring Chris Ash as defensive coordinator: Source
Seider and Ash talked about how Freeman reached out about the openings at Notre Dame, not that there aren't agents at work as intermediaries. When Seider arrived at Notre Dame to see the campus, Freeman picked him up from the airport. When Ash wanted to know more about Notre Dame, he didn't call Rudolph (the two worked together at Wisconsin); he asked Freeman. A school that has been a bucket list stop for many college coaches seems to have moved up because of the man leading the program.
'It's Notre Dame,' Ash said. 'The type of people that come to Notre Dame, players, staff, all of these things together made this a no-brainer for me. I'm here to become one of them. (The players) are not here to adjust to me. I'm here to adjust to them. The players, the overall culture, that's what I'm coming to be a part of.'
There are no guarantees this will work out. Coaches with more experience and more success than Freeman have had to reconfigure staffs and found the pieces don't always fit. But it's easy to look at how Freeman has enhanced Notre Dame's staff and believe he has filled the gaps with the right coaches.
Seider put it best as to why he made the move.
'It was Notre Dame,' he said. 'It was Marcus Freeman.'
And that all puts the program and its head coach in a strong place.
(Top photo of Ja'Juan Seider: Doug Murray / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)