Road Trip: Denbrock and Golden Work Hand-in-Hand As Fall Camp Closes
Whose car we gonna take?
While probably not as dramatic as it was in “The Town”, that’s how I envisioned Mike Denbrock and Al Golden’s drive to Marcus Freeman’s house looking.
As fall camp wrapped up Saturday, Notre Dame’s offensive and defensive coordinators took a step back from the daily grind of camp to truly evaluate where the team is — this time in a different setting.
“Coach (Denbrock) and I had a chance to ride together to Coach Freeman's house the other day, and just pull back and say, ‘From a macro side, what gives you problems? Or what's really, really fun to watch?” Golden said.
The night at the Freeman residence gave both coaches a chance to reflect on what the other does well, and how that may translate when the regular season starts.
“I need to know information from him, and I hope he knows that when he needs something from me, he's going to get it so that we can make each other better,” Denbrock said. “If there's adjustments that need to be made, if there's tells in what we're doing. Do we need to disguise this, that, or something else better? Are we doing too much of this? What really stings you when you're in this coverage?
“That interaction between the defensive staff is so vital to our development, and hopefully it helps them a little bit as well.”
Denbrock and Golden had their final chances to go head-to-head in fall camp during the jersey scrimmage Saturday. Denbrock’s offense pulled out a 42-40 win, but no one really knows how it’s scored.
The slight margin of victory didn’t bring Denbrock much joy, though.
“I didn't really like it, to be honest with you,” Denbrock explained. “I mean, if you were asking me if we would have played the way we're capable of playing, I would have hoped that it would have been a little bit bigger margin there.”
While Denbrock’s brutal honesty doesn’t necessarily reflect the best on the offense, he knows his unit is going up against a great defense — led by a great staff.
“Al's fantastic,” Denbrock said. “The whole defensive staff, and the communication piece of all this between the two staffs in particular is vital to everything that we're doing, because we're building a football team here.”
Denbrock also knows going up against the stout Irish defense will only help speed up Riley Leonard’s progression in his system.
“He's not afraid to try it and fail and learn from it,” Denbrock said of his new quarterback. “He doesn't usually get too bad at paralysis by analysis, which is easy to do against what our defense does, where you're standing there, just kind of wondering, OK, what is the right thing to do?’ He makes a decision and lives with it.”
Golden reciprocated how tough it is to go against Denbrock and the offense every day.
“They do a great job,” Golden said. “Number one, they have a quarterback that can distribute or he can solve it with his legs, which is really, I mean, that's an awesome starting point.”
It doesn’t end with stopping Leonard, either. Golden has to scheme around stopping guys like Mitchell Evans and Jeremiyah Love.
“Everybody talks about Mitch, but you know, the other two tight ends behind him made great strides, and now, all of a sudden, there's different combinations that can go in the game,” Golden said. “I love our running back corps, different combinations of wide receivers in the game. The totality of that, if you will, provides great challenges.
“It's not like, ‘Oh, just take away Mitch or just take away Beaux (Collins) or, you know, hey, we’ve got to focus on Jeremiyah.’ It's not that, because then Riley can get you with his feet. So it's great. I love the system.”
While difficult days lie ahead for the pair of Irish coordinators as Aug. 31 looms, hopefully the saying ‘iron sharpens iron’ proves true for Notre Dame in 2024.
“Coaching defense is hard,” Golden said. “Trying to try to stop (Denbrock) every day with everything they got going on. It's hard. It can be difficult. There are difficult days. There can be challenging days.”