Chris Ash Prioritizing Identity Over Opponent as Notre Dame Prepares for Miami

Notre Dame will open the season at Miami in just over a month and it’s a safe bet the Irish have already started preparing for the Hurricanes. 

Miami, led by head coach Mario Cristobal, added 19 players through the Transfer Portal this offseason, including eight on offense. The biggest name is former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck, but the Irish will also see a few familiar names on August 31.

Tulane tight end transfer Alex Bauman, the younger brother of current Notre Dame tight end Kevin Bauman, is now a Hurricane. Former Notre Dame tight end commit Jack Nickel also landed in Miami after transferring from Michigan State.

Notre Dame defensive coordinator Chris Ash will have his hands full preparing for the season opener, as it’s his first collegiate game since 2020, but also an offense that will look completely different than a year ago when it comes to the skill positions. 

”Every year, an offense or a defense can change based on just what they feel they need to do schematically or the players that they have,” Ash said. ‘In this type of situation, you gotta look at what Carson did at Georgia, what were his strengths, what were his weaknesses, what he did well? How does that fit into what Miami did last year, and maybe try to identify some things that maybe could do differently with him.” 

Yet, Ash’s focus won’t be too much on Miami in game one. It will be on having his defense ready to set a tone. 

“In game one, it's about you more than it is about them,” explained Ash. “It'll be a game of adjustments for us. That's what a game one always is. Our play style and the way we want to play has to show up and we'll adjust as we go through a game.

“We'll study Miami from last year. We'll study Carson's film from Georgia. But at the end of the day, for me, it's more important about how we show up, how we play, how we execute the fundamentals we use and how we bring those calls to life on defense.”

What will the Notre Dame defense look like? 

That’s still a bit unclear. Ash has installed several new concepts, including an increased use of zone coverages, and he intentionally stressed certain areas of the defense in the spring to test their limits and identify where improvement was needed.

In his past stops, Ash used a match-man coverage, which is something this group of defensive backs and linebackers should handle well. 

That said, if you’re looking for Ash to give hints at what Notre Dame could use in Miami or over the course of the season, don’t get your hopes up. 

“We're running the Notre Dame defense. What does that mean? We're going to play fast. We're going to play aggressive. We're going to be fundamentally sound, situationally aware. We're going to do what we need to do to win games based on the players that we have and who we play from week to week.

“Does that mean we're playing man? Does it mean we're playing man-match zone? We're playing vision and break zone? It could be any of those things based on what we have to do and who we have healthy on our roster to go play each Saturday.”

Notre Dame fans might recall Clark Lea’s heavy use of match-man coverage during his time as defensive coordinator, when the Irish featured a secondary of Julian Love, Troy Pride Jr., Alohi Gilman, and Jalen Elliott.

Why is match coverage difficult for opposing offenses to handle? Offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock believes it requires a high level of individual talent to beat.

“If they're an on-body coverage defense, like a lot of match defenses are in today's college football, you've got to have guys who can make contested catches,” Denbrock explained. “You also have to have some guys who can separate from that match coverage and take advantage of it. Part of the fun of it, as we went through the year last year, as we progressed offensively, the matchups that teams tried to defend us with, we were able to take advantage of. We did that with the tight ends at times, we did that with the wide receivers at times, we did that with the running backs at times.” 

As for success, Ash plans to measure it on a week-to-week basis. 

“We'll have some goals, we'll have things that we'll look at, but if we're winning games and we're a part of that, then we're playing good defense.”

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