Reports: Notre Dame special teams coordinator Brian Mason jumping to the Indianapolis Colts Notre Dame announces hire of QB coach Gino Guidugli, former Cincinnati offensive coordinator Reports: Notre Dame to hire Virginia Tech offensive line coach Joe Rudolph in same role Where Notre Dame Was & Is: Defensive line, suddenly inexperienced and unproven New Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker’s wide array of offensive experiences in his own words

Outflow at the end of the cycle Marcus FreemanThe second coaching staff continues multiple Saturday morning reports that Notre Dame’s special teams coordinator Brian Mason is set to join the Indianapolis Colts in the same role, joining new Colts head coach Shane Steichen.

Irish illustrated was the first to announce Mason’s departure.

Mason became the third assistant manager to leave the Irish since February, after the offensive coordinator. Tommy Rhys (to Alabama) and offensive line coach Harry Hystand (retirement). The most notable aspect of the grouping is not quantity but timing, as the college football assistant coach’s carousel rotates later and later in the current calendar.

Mason was in Notre Dame for only one season, but what a season it was. The Irish have blocked seven punts in 2022, turning the tables repeatedly in tight games. As a former quarterback for Notre Dame Isaiah Fosky said this week that it was no longer Notre Dame’s punt recovery unit.

“I really like Coach Mason,” Fosky said at the NFL plant in Indianapolis. “He helped me a lot with the return of the punt, the blocking of the punt—it’s not called a return of the punt; it’s called a punt block. Basically, that’s what we’ve been doing all season, blocking shots.”

Perhaps the most absurd part of Mason’s block shot streak was that six different players got their hands on opposite punts, and Fosky was the only one to get to two.

Hailing from suburban Indianapolis, Mason has many quality-of-life reasons to join the Colts staff.

Notre Dame kicks off spring training on March 22, setting a clear deadline for Freeman to re-staff his coaching staff, and that’s if there’s no more churn. FootballScoop.com reported on Friday that the coach of receivers Chancey Stacky and safety coach Chris O’Leary are applying for jobs with the Baltimore Ravens.

Sources tell FootballScoop that a trio of Notre Dame assistant coaches are becoming NFL candidates. https://t.co/kOVJ0ylstp

— FootballScoop (@FootballScoop) March 3, 2023

@d_farmer tweet

Notre Dame officially announced the hiring of a former Cincinnati offensive coordinator. Gino Guidugli as coach of the Irish quarterbacks. Wednesday’s announcement came after Guidugli’s hiring was first reported on Feb. 15.

“We are very pleased to welcome Gino to our program,” said the head coach. Marcus Freeman said. “I have personally seen his talent in developing quarterbacks and teaching them how to consistently perform at the elite level in college and succeed in the NFL. He also has extensive experience in assisting high-level crime. He is a great addition to our staff.”

Perhaps the most notable item on Guiduglia’s resume is that he has been the quarterbacks coach for the past four seasons. Desmond Ridderfive years in Cincinnati, playing a significant role in Ridder’s transformation from two-star rookie to NFL third-round draft pick and NFL starter.

Currently, Notre Dame is in need of a quarterbacks coach capable of both developing a quarterback in a rising youth Tyler Buechner and work hand in hand with veteran transfer veteran Wake Forest. Sam Hartmanprospective Irish starter in 2023.

The addition of Guidugli will give Notre Dame more offensive experience as he has held that role with Cincinnati for the past two seasons, guiding the offense to a playoff berth in 2021.

Whether or not Guidugli is involved in negotiations with the Irish, the quarterback coach will obviously play a role in developing game plans with the newly appointed offensive coordinator. Just Parker. Freeman discussed precisely this dynamic and even mentioned Guidugli’s name when he introduced Parker as offensive coordinator on February 19. Guidugli for four seasons in Cincinnati. For three of them, Guidugli was the quarterback coach, working with the offensive coordinator. Mike Denbrock.

“They should have a great relationship,” Freeman said of a quarterback coach working with an offensive coordinator. “There has to be trust, there has to be a very clear understanding of what is expected of this quarterback position. Quarterbacks know exactly what the coordinator is thinking, so it’s important that these two are on the same wavelength.”

At Gwidugli’s hiring, exactly half of Freeman’s staff — five of his 10 assistant coaches — are tied to his past, and they all spend time in Cincinnati, if not elsewhere, with him.

“There are great resumes out there, great guys who can do very good interviews,” Freeman said, acknowledging his ten-year friendship with Parker. “You learn a lot about a person when you are with them every day. It doesn’t take long to say that he is a great coach, he is the kind of person I would like to train with in the future. Maybe this is the person I don’t want to train with.

“At the end of the day, I want to make sure that I have the best coaches we can find in this place, but there is also an element that I know and believe that this person can do his job. I know that he is a great football coach. I know he will develop our players and I know he cares about them and will treat them right.”

Parker’s first student coaching job as an alumnus assistant in Kentucky was within a similar relationship as an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. He quoted this at his opening press conference and went on to talk about what division of responsibilities would likely be between him and Guidugli.

“Anything technical, we’ll have a professional do that part,” said Parker. “My role will be to make sure we have unit meetings, look at the past phases of our attack and other things to make sure we see all the scale together through the same lens, and more importantly, let these guys feel my confidence that we want to call because they love it too. …

“In the future, when we can officially announce our quarterback coach, I don’t want me to come in and say something different from what he says. If we are not on the same wavelength, we do not speak the same language, then we have a problem. It’s not something we would like to do.”

This language is based on game calls and shorthand rather than distribution of games, but to give context to the two years that Guidugli called games with the Bearcats, compared to the time Parker was coordinating the joint offensive in West Virginia, although Parker called games for the Climbers in just the last six games of the 2021 regular season…

Cincinnati SP+ Ranking for 2021 Preseason: No. 40 in the country with a value of 33.6
Cincinnati SP+ Ranking for 2021 Postseason: No. 13 in the country with a value of 37.5

Cincinnati SP+ Ranking for 2022 Preseason: No. 16 in the country with a value of 36.2
Cincinnati SP+ Ranking for 2022 Postseason: No. 72 in the country with a value of 25.2

Cincinnati 2021: 50.6% rush attempts, 49.4% retracements (adjusted for sacks).
5.9 yards on the dash, 7.5 yards on the pullback.

Cincinnati 2022: 46.1% rush attempts, 53.9% retracements (including sacks).
5.1 yards on the dash, 6.3 yards on the pullback.

Looking at these Bearcats numbers, Ridder featured a star veteran quarterback in 2021, not to mention one of the most talented defensemen in Group of Five history, and almost none in 2022.

West Virginia’s SP+ Ranking in 2020…