For Whom The Del Tolls
The final major piece of Brian Kelly’s massive staff overhaul is in place, as news broke today that former Arizona State assistant DelVaughn Alexander is headed to South Bend as the new wide receiver coach. Alexander has been at Arizona State since 2011, working with receivers through 2015 and with tight ends in 2016. Alexander has a very impressive background. He played for USC, serving as a reserve behind Keyshawn Johnson and Johnnie Morton. After two years as a grad assistant at Southern Cal, Alexander joined John Robinson’s staff at UNLV, coaching receivers from 1998 to 2002 with a brief hiatus in 1999 as an analyst for the San Diego Chargers. From there, Alexander went to Mike Riley’s staff in Oregon State as receivers coach and recruiting coordinator from 2003 to 2004, where he helped future Biletnikoff winner Mike Haas to record back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons. He then served as Jim Harbaugh’s running backs coach from 2005 to 2006 before heading north to Wisconsin, where he coached receivers on Bret Bielema’s staff from 2007 to 2011. As noted, in 2012 he headed to Arizona State, where he coached receivers from until 2015, including standout performer Jaelen Strong, and tight ends last year.
Alexander switched to tight ends in Tempe last season because new Irish offensive coordinator Chip Long, who was the Sun Devils’ tight ends coach from 2012 to 2015, vacated the position when he followed Mike Norvell to Memphis. As you might imagine, Long and Alexander have a great working relationship, which no doubt factored into Alexander’s selection for the Irish staff. It’s pretty clear that Long, in addition to snagging play calling duties for next season, had the opportunity to bring in his own guy in the role longtime Kelly confidant Mike Denbrock vacated. There are plenty of negative things to fairly say about Brian Kelly right now, but “he only hires people he knows” isn’t one of them. It never was, really, but it’s absolutely impossible to say that now.
In what has been a theme with Kelly’s recent hires, Alexander also carries a reputation as an excellent recruiter with ties to a vital recruiting region. Some of his top recruiting wins at ASU are DT Joe Wicker (DT/#87 overall) and WR Stanley Norman (WR/#153) last year and Alex Perry (CB/#147) this year. Oh, and those kids came out of Long Beach Poly, Junipero Serra, and Bishop Gorman, respectively. Not too shabby. He’ll have his work cut out for him in trying to add two or three more receiver prospects to the 2017 class in the next three weeks. Grab some coffee, Coach – the dead period ends tomorrow, and you’re going to be very busy.
Recapping the Coaching Staff Changes
As the Dread Pirate Roberts once said, truly, you have a dizzying intellect… With so much upheaval on the staff, and the last “real” piece falling into place today, we thought it would be worthwhile to recap all the changes.
| Role | 2016 Coach | 2017 Coach |
|---|---|---|
| OC | Mike Denbrock / Mike Sanford | Chip Long |
| DC | Brian VanGorder | Mike Elko |
| ST | Scott Booker | Brian Polian |
| S&C | Paul Longo | Matt Balis |
| QB | Mike Sanford | Brian Kelly / Tommy Rees (GA) |
| RB | Autry Denson | Autry Denson |
| WR | Mike Denbrock | Del Alexander |
| TE | Scott Booker | Chip Long |
| OL | Harry Hiestand | Harry Hiestand |
| DL | Keith Gilmore | Mike Elston |
| LB | Mike Elston | Clark Lea |
| DB | Todd Lyght | Toddy Lyght (CB) / Mike Elko (S) |
Not all of this is official, but there’s been enough smoke around these moves that we can feel pretty confident about this lineup at this point. I’m also assuming that Elko will be heavily involved with the safeties, but I think that’s a pretty fair assumption. The big takeaways here are that literally not one of the new hires has any previous connection to Kelly, that both new coordinators got a chance to bring in their own guys, that for the first time in Kelly’s tenure at Notre Dame and possibly the first time in his career he has a dedicated special teams coordinator, and that three very old friends of Kelly – Longo, Denbrock, and Gilmore – were all demoted or pushed out. There’s no telling how well it will work, but there’s also denying that at this point Kelly has quite clearly pushed all his chips to the center of the table for 2017.
So this means 5 new coaches on staff (out of 10).
Interesting that perhaps Rees allows Kelly to have a dedicated Special Teams coach because having such a coach means one less offensive assistant (with the slack being picked up by Rees with the QB’s the way the other hires went).
Going from Todd Lyght to Toddy Lyght is a big upgrade for the secondary.
Toddy Lyght? You mean using LESS bourbon? That’s just wrong man. So wrong.
Les Bourbon? I hate that guy!
He’s the Mad Hattan.
How do you feel about Joe Morehead?
I love this subthread. Well done guys.
Better Coach Toddy than Coach Toady.
Is Gilmore going to be a analyst
Haven’t seen anything one way or the other, but that seems pretty unlikely. Hard to imagine that he would want to stick around if he got fired as a position coach.
@yea what do you think this is? Alabama?@
It will be interesting to see whether Long and Elko coach from the field or the booth during games, and if from the booth, who they rely on (Alexander and Lea presumably) to give on the field guidance the their units.
Long was announced as the sole playcaller, so I would assume he’s going to be in the box in order to have a better look at the defensive alignments and all that. Though who knows, maybe Kelly will want him right there next to him on the field for more, um, immediate feedback on those play calls.
They say a change is as good as a rest… I’m feeling like Rip Van Winkle over here!
I’m both excited and nervous for 2017. Go Irish!!
While there was significant turnover w/ 5 brand-new coaches + a new S&C guy, I’m glad the coordinators each have a position group they’ll deal w/ and have a very familiar coach on their staff. I’m hoping/assuming this will expedite the install of Elko & Long’s respective systems, which is imperative given our young QB, recently-awful defense, and — for those of us okay w/ Kelly as HC — the short & medium-term stability of the program.
I think it’s also worth noting that we’re adding three former recruiting coordinators to the staff: Long, Polian, and Alexander. Losing Denbrock & Sanford left a hole in our recruiting game but adding the 3 aforementioned coaches is clearly an effort to fill that void, and more, hopefully.
1. The team needs to have a lot of success for any of these coaches to be around more than a year. So who knows what effect that will have on recruiting.
2. Are any of them good at pulling in D-Linemen? Because that’s the big deficiency in the team’s talent.
3. Our past few recruiting classes have been nothing special and this one is going downhill quickly. How effective are these guys at developing mediocre talent??
While I think you’re right that in all probability this is BK’s last season, I think historically at least some assistant coaches may be held over, particularly if they are known to be good recruiters (e.g., Tony Alford with BK last time) . Perhaps this could be the case for at least some of these new guys.