Marcus Freeman Will Look To Continue Strong Offensive Coaching Hires

Marcus Freeman came to Notre Dame as one of the best young defensive minds in the game, but in his first season as head coach it was his offensive hires that impressed the most.

With Tommy Rees off to Alabama, Freeman will get to make his first offensive coordinator hire, and he'll need to once again strike gold with his offensive coaching hires.

When Freeman was hired to replace Brian Kelly his offensive coordinator was already chosen for him. This isn't to say that Freeman wouldn't have picked Rees anyway, but Notre Dame's higher ups announced that Rees was being retained before Freeman was named head coach.

Freeman kept on running backs coach Lance Taylor and tight ends coach John McNulty, who had proven to be quality coaches. Taylor left in mid-January to become the offensive coordinator at Louisville, and McNulty moved onto Boston College to run their offense. That allowed Freeman to completely remake the offensive staff at every spot but coordinator.

Freeman's first two hires on offense were offensive line coach Harry Hiestand and wide receivers coach Chansi Stuckey. That was followed by him bringing in Deland McCullough to coach running backs and Gerad Parker to coach tight ends.

It was a unique blend of hires, with Hiestand and McCullough being the splashy, big name hires, Parker had strong ties to Freeman and Stuckey was a wildly unproven coach with just one year of coaching experience.

A strong case could be made that Freeman hit a grand slam home run with those hires. Break down the film and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Hiestand and McCullough lived up to their big reputations.

Hiestand turned a young line that was poorly developed by the previous position coach into the heart and soul of the offense. Notre Dame is expected to have one of the nation's best offensive lines in 2023.

McCullough took a group of young, unproven backs and turned them into the heart-and-soul of the offense. Notre Dame's backs were outstanding in the final two months of the season despite not having much of a pass attack to take the pressure the run game.

The production at wide receiver won't blow you away, but the film tells a different story. Stuckey inherited arguably the poorest coached group on the roster, and it was a young group of players that lost its most experienced wideout before the season began. By the end of the season, Stuckey's group was playing fundamentally sound football.

Parker inherited the best tight end in college football, but throughout the 2022 season Mayer continue to improve his blocking and route running. Behind Mayer was a lot of youth, and injured players. Sophomores Mitchell Evans and Cane Berrong both began the season banged up, and then junior Kevan Bauman and talented freshman Eli Raridon were lost to season-ending injuries in the third week.

Despite that, the tight end position remained a strength of an offense that liked to use a lot of 12 personnel packages.

Ironically, it's Freeman's defensive hires that were the biggest question marks. Offensively, Freeman received high marks for his assistant coaching hires.

That must continue now, as Freeman is set to make the biggest hire of his young tenure at Notre Dame. This is not a hire that he can miss on. Notre Dame returns a very deep and talented offensive roster in 2023, and he has an outstanding group of assistants already on board. If he makes the right hire for offensive coordinator it will put Notre Dame in position to make a big jump offensively, and that's what is needed for the Irish to make a run at a national championship.

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