Notre Dame Needs A Home Run Hire At Wide Receiver, And I Know Just The Coach
The pieces are starting to fall in place for Notre Dame and head coach Marcus Freeman, but he's not done yet and there are still very important moves he needs to make. Those moves will ultimately determine how successful his first season will be.
From a coaching standpoint, Freeman hit a home run bringing back Harry Hiestand, one of the best in the business at what he does. That was a huge first step to giving offensive coordinator Tommy Rees the tools he needs to build an elite offense. Up next is making an equally strong hire at wide receiver. Notre Dame has talent at wide receiver that far surpasses its production, and the unit as a whole has struggled to play the game the right way for much of the last five years.
Rees and Notre Dame need a position coach that can get the unit to play with the mental and technical skills needed to maximize its immense potential. There are two names to watch, including Alabama wide receivers coach Holmon Wiggins. There is another coach on the board that checks every single box that I have for what constitutes a home run hire.
That would be Purdue wide receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard, who also serves as the co-offensive coordinator for the Boilermakers.
THE BIO
Shephard has been at Purdue for five seasons. He came to Purdue after spending the 2016 season at Washington State, which came after five seasons at Western Kentucky.
A native of Fort Wayne, Ind., the 38-year old Shephard has developed into one of the best wide receiver coaches in the business over the last six to seven years.
Shephard worked under Bobby Petrino at Western Kentucky in 2013, and then worked under Jeff Brohm during the 2014-15 seasons. He also worked under Brohm the last five seasons at Purdue. Shephard coached with Mike Leach during the 2016 season.
That means Shephard spent time with one of the best Air Raid minds in the business (Leach) and two of the best pro-style minds in the business (Brohm, Petrino).
THE NUMBERS
Purdue averaged 306.3 passing yards per game during Shephard's five season coaching the wideouts, and it averaged 322.4 yards in the last four seasons.
Purdue ranked 5th nationally in 2021 with 355.1 passing yards per game, it ranked 2nd in completion percentage (70.7) and 22nd in passer rating (153.86). Purdue ranked 16th in passing yards in 2020 (309.0), 12th in 2019 (309.9) and 11th in 2018 (307.5)
Purdue junior receiver David Bell ranked 5th nationally in receiving yards per game (116.9) and 2nd nationally in catches per game (8.5). Bell also caught 86 passes for 1,035 yards and seven touchdowns as a true freshman in 2019.
Purdue had three receivers with at least 53 catches this season and five with at least 30 catches in 2021.
In 2018, Purdue wide receiver Rondale Moore was named a consensus All-American after hauling in 114 passes for 1,258 yards and 12 touchdowns as a true freshman. Moore led the nation in catches during that season and ranked 8th in touchdown catches.
That means Shephard produced a pair of 1,000-yard receivers as a true freshmen in five seasons at Purdue.
Washington State finished 3rd in passing yards per game (362.5) during the 2016 season, Shephard's only campaign in Pullman.
Western Kentucky ranked 4th in passing yards per game (372.2) in 2015 and led the nation with 50 passing touchdowns. The previous season WKU ranked 2nd (374.3) in passing yards and led the nation with 49 touchdown passes.
Hilltopper receiver Taywan Taylor ranked 3rd nationally in receiving yards (1,467) in 2015 to go with 86 catches, and he ranked 2nd nationally in receiving touchdowns.
During that same season WKU wideout Nicholas Morris caught 63 passes for 971 yards, Jared Dangerfield caught 82 passes for 844 yards and Antwane Grant hauled in 55 passes for 701 yards.
WHY SHEPHARD?
The numbers are fun to look at, but ultimately they aren't the reason I believe Shephard is the kind of coach that Notre Dame needs at wide receiver.
When I watch Alabama and Ohio State they clearly have great talent, but they don't dominate just on talent alone, they also know how to play the game. They know how to run routes, they know how to get open, they display the finer points of receiver play time and time again. As a former receivers coach, I greatly appreciate how those two units go about their business.
It also frustrated me a great deal watching Notre Dame's receivers show none of that ability, with the Irish wideouts consistently having to rely on just being talented. They were rarely given the tools needed to play the technical and mental part of the game at a high level.
When you break down Purdue's film you see the same kind of technical and mental mastery that I see when I watch Alabama and Ohio State. It's how they come off the line, how they attack leverage, how they get into and out of their top ends, it's about how they know how to run to open spots, how they use their hands at the line and during routes, how they attack the football, and how they work mesh concepts, their spacing. Everything about that unit screams to me that they are coached at an elite level on a day-to-day basis.
Shephard also comes from a more pro-style system at Purdue, one that utilized a number of advanced pass concepts. He wasn't teaching players how to run just five or six routes like you might see in more of an Air Raid type offense. There is a lot of nuance to how the Purdue wideouts play the game.
With all due respect to the players he coached at Purdue, only two of them had the talent of what Notre Dame possesses on a year-to-year basis. That would be Moore and Bell, and both were 1,000-yard receivers as true freshmen, while Bell went over 1,000 yards in two of his three seasons. The exception was the Covid shortened 2020 season, during which Purdue only played six games. Bell averaged 104.2 yards and had eight touchdowns in those six games.
He also took players that lacked elite talent and taught them how to play the game at a high level.
When you think about what a guy like that could do with players like Lorenzo Styles, Deion Colzie, Tobias Merriweather, Braden Lenzy, Jayden Thomas, perhaps even a Xavier Watts should he decide to come back to offense, you start to get excited about what the Irish could be next season.
Rees has shown me a great deal of potential as a young coach, and he now has two years of play-calling under his belt. Adding a veteran like Hiestand should be a tremendous benefit to him, just like having Lance Taylor and John McNulty is a great benefit to him. Giving Rees a receivers coach like Shephard, someone with the knowledge of the pass game that we saw at Purdue in recent seasons, could make the Notre Dame offensive staff incredibly dangerous.
That's why Shephard is a coach I believe Notre Dame should pursue hard, and if they are able to convince him to come to South Bend it would be yet another very, very important piece to the championship puzzle that Freeman is trying to put together.
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