Marcus Freeman Explains Why Al Golden Was His Choice For Defensive Coordinator

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman had a very difficult task this offseason, and that was to find his replacement. With Freeman promoted to head coach he had to find someone to take over the defensive coordinator position.

With Freeman's background and strong reputation as a defensive coordinator, landing a high quality coach to fill that role was challenging. The process took some time, but ultimately Freeman landed an outstanding coach to fill that role by landing Al Golden of the Cincinnati Bengals.

Freeman explained the process, his discussions with Golden and made sure to let everyone know this was going to be Golden's defense. Here is Freeman explaining all of that while introducing his first staff.

Here are the quotes from Freeman:

"I didn't know Al Golden personally, but I knew who Al Golden was? I knew Al Golden as the head coach at Temple and at Miami, and had an unbelievable reputation. It was a unique opportunity for me to kind of interview a person over time. We were able to do zoom interviews while they were going through their season, just to stay in contact, just to talk, but I wanted to respect his process of preparing each week for the Cincinnati Bengals."

Golden's 10-year experience as a head coach - first at Temple (2006-10) and then at Miami (2011-15) - was something that Freeman valued.

"I was looking for a guy with head coaching experience. That was something that we did not have on our staff that I thought was going to be extremely valuable. He has that, but also a guy that has intelligence. The more we met, the more we talked, I learned right away this person understands football, he understands scheme."

Freeman has preached from the moment he arrived as the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame about the desire to do things his way on defense, and part of "his way" was building the scheme around the specific talents of his roster. Golden is going to run the defense, but Golden seems to be cut from the same cloth, which would explain why the two connected.

"I was also looking for a person that didn't want to come in here and just drop this playbook, right, and say, 'Hey, this is what we're doing.' No, Al Golden was a guy who said, 'Hey, let me evaluate what you all are doing, let me evaluate your players and let's put together the best scheme.'

"Ultimately, he is the defensive coordinator, and I want to make sure everyone understands that. Al Golden is the defensive coordinator, Marcus Freeman is not the defensive coordinator. He has to take this thing over, but the ability to come in and to adapt to what our players know, I think is a huge benefit for our players. My job is to always take care of our players. This will be their third defensive coordinator in three years, so if you talk about three defensive schemes in three years, that's difficult, that's tough. The ability for somebody to come in and say, okay, let me learn what they know and then let's enhance it from there, that to me was what I was looking for."

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