Thoughts on the Terry Joseph Hire for Notre Dame
Notre Dame tabbed their new safeties coach and it’s one who has had plenty of experience coaching at the highest levels of college football. Terry Joseph comes from North Carolina most recently, but he has coached in four of the Power 5 conferences. Technically he has coached in Big 12 country as well, even though that is the lone conference not on his resume. Texas A&M is an SEC school, but the Lonestar state is definitely Big 12 territory.
I honestly did not know much about his background as a coach or recruiter before I started doing research on him, but after looking into what he has done, I found some interesting nuggets about him. I also have some thoughts about what he is bringing to Notre Dame after watching North Carolina and reading more about his background.
Recruiting Background
Joseph is from New Orleans, Louisiana and started out coaching high school football there. He’s also been a GA at LSU and has coached at Louisiana Tech. That’s obviously a place where he is comfortable recruiting and has had some success there with his ties to the region, but he hasn’t been overly effective in stealing recruits away from LSU. To be fair, no one really is.
One player he was the primary recruiter for that he helped land out of Louisiana while Joseph was at Texas A&M is safety Keldrick Caper. A former Notre Dame target that the Irish had in for an official visit, Caper told Jason Howell at Texags last January about the time that he knew he would choose Texas A&M. Joseph was the one who closed that recruitment with this gesture.
“My mom was tired. We were touring around and things like that and meeting with people and had been looking at stuff. Coach Joseph, my DB coach, said, "Mom, there’s a couch in there. We’re going to go get some dinner and we will bring you a plate ok?" And she got to get her proper rest, and to me right there that sealed the freaking deal. Because someone who would show compassion for my mom like that and be considerate of her rest was something special to me. At that moment that sealed the deal for me. I was in the process of eating and I said "you know this is where I want to go."
That story certainly doesn’t necessarily mean he is a dynamic recruiter and Joseph does not have a reputation of landing big time prospects year after year, but I think that gives you a sense of how he approaches the relationship with a player he is recruiting. That was obviously something that made a difference for Caper in him choosing A&M over the Irish.
Can he open doors for Notre Dame in Louisiana? He’ll have a better shot than most. The more important part will have to do with how he recruits his position.
He landed a couple of big time safety prospects in Justin Dunning and Larry Pryor Jr. in addition to Caper while at A&M.
As for what he is specifically looking for in a defensive back in terms of evaluation, he gave an interview after just being hired by Texas A&M where he laid out exactly what he wants at the position.
“If I could say the three things that I have to have it would be play the deep ball, play man to man, and also be able to tackle. If you can get that, you should be able to coach the rest of it in that type of player.”
As for coaching them after he gets them on campus…
Production and Player Development
It’s always tough to evaluate coaching hires when looking at stats alone, especially because some stats are so misleading. Passing defense is one that is tough to gauge because the amount of yards given up per game is not the best measurement to judge how a defensive backfield played or not. That’s why I prefer to look at S&P+ pass defense rankings that are opponent adjusted and take into account efficiency as well.
Even those rankings can’t determine how injuries impact a team or how much the pass rush correlates to defending the pass as well. But it’s the best we’ve got and for what it’s worth, Joseph has led some defensive backfields that have performed well statistically.
Since his first season at Tennessee in 2010 leading up to last season at North Carolina, Joseph has coached defensive backfields that have finished in top-25 in the S&P+ pass defense rankings three times. In 2012 at Nebraska they finished 19th and two times at Texas A&M they did it, finishing 24th in 2014 and 2nd in 2015.
Three out of eight years being ranked near the top of college football is good, but obviously you’d like it to be more than that. One thing that is very positive, though, is the fact that he has only coached a defensive backfield that was below average against the pass once in eight years. That was this most recent season at North Carolina (they finished 84th), but the defense as a whole was ravaged by injuries. The other seasons his groups were ranked 47th, 54th, 41st, and 60th.
As for player development, it’s worth mentioning that he has worked for Bo Pelini (at LSU and Nebraska) and John Chavis (at A&M) as well as having Denver Broncos coach Vance Joseph as his cousin. Vance Joseph was a longtime defensive backs coach in the NFL before his current gig. Terry Joseph has worked with and been hired by people who know defense very well.
At Nebraska he helped Daimion Stafford become an All-Big Ten safety and NFL Draft pick and did the same with Justin Evans (2nd round to Tampa Bay last spring). He also is largely responsible for the development of Armani Watts, a recent All-SEC safety who is going to be a high pick in this upcoming draft.
Former NFL safety Jordan Pugh played in the league for four years with three different teams and was a safety at A&M from 2006-09. After Joseph left for North Carolina last January, Pugh had this to say about him to our friends at Texags:
“I think that losing Coach Joseph to North Carolina hurt Sumlin a little bit and hurt the defensive back group as a whole. You saw what he did with Justin Evans and the development he's had with Armani Watts. There are a lot of athletic defensive backs across the country but the mental side comes into play and that's where Joseph made a lot of difference.”
Certainly everyone hopes there is immediate dividends with player development for those who played last season for the Irish. He helped former 3 star prospect and Myles Dorn become of the best safeties in the ACC last season as a sophomore. Dorn had seven passes defended, 2.5 tackles for loss, and a forced fumble. He’s going to be a future pro.
It really stood out to me that Nick Saban was considering him to coach defensive backs at Alabama. Even to be a candidate for that job is something that is notable because no one cares more about defensive back development than Saban. A coach has to be pretty good just to get his name in the mix for that specific job.
Coaching Philosophy
Joseph is a vocal coach. I don’t know if I’d call him a yeller, but from what I have seen he is someone that is talking to his players after every rep. He always seems to be teaching, which fits perfectly with Clark Lea’s philosoph. The balance of being a bit more fiery than Lea is probably a good thing as well.
Back in 2014 when Joseph first started out at A&M, he sat down for an interview with Billy Liucci of Texags. In that interview Joseph explained how he coaches and how he likes his players to play:
“I think, over the places I’ve coached, I’ve liked my secondaries to be aggressive, but they’re also going to be disciplined within the scheme. We are going to challenge receivers and play one play at a time. One thing, as a coach, that I try and tell guys in the secondary is that a football game is not three hours. A football game is 80 plays of six seconds. If you can focus for those six seconds, sit back in your seat and cool down for a bit, get back in there and focus for the next six seconds instead of thinking that they have to be locked in for three hours. That way, we can have a high amount of focus, discipline and tremendous effort.
"I think one thing the players have learned is that they are going to be held accountable. That comes from in the meeting room, on the field and off the field. I want them to hold themselves to a high standard.”
I love that way of approaching defensive back play and that’s something that someone like Jalen Elliott can hopefully embrace and learn from. He was a player who I felt was constantly on tilt after missing a tackle or making a bad read. He let one missed play affect his next opportunity.
The standard is obvious at Notre Dame and the standard is high at places like A&M, Nebraska, and Tennessee as well. It can only help him that he already preaches that kind of thing at a place where there is going to be a lot of attention on the play of his position group.
Safety play has not been strong enough at Notre Dame for too long and people clearly want that to change.
Final Thoughts
It’s easy to look at North Carolina last season and how bad they were and wonder why Notre Dame has targeted Joseph. I don’t believe that’s all that fair, though, because of decimation that happened to them with injuries to impact players on all three levels of the defense.
Even with that, I still thought they played better than their record would indicate because the offense was so bad in many games. I liked what I saw from their DBs when watching them early in the season. They were able to get their hands on the football a lot (36th in passes defensed) and his A&M DBs did a good job of that as well (18th in 2016).
That fits right in with the type of disruption that was brought in with Mike Elko and should continue under Clark Lea.
I couldn’t call it a homerun hire because he hasn’t recruited well enough for it to be considered that. I do think it’s a solid hire, though, and one that will hopefully help Notre Dame’s safeties take a significant step forward next season.