And managing your best friend as a coordinator can be problematic for a HC with a big job ahead of him.
Richt took Golden’s roster and led them to the same record but instead of losing a meaningless bowl game, he won a meaningless bowl game. Let’s not pretend he completely turned the team around.
They won 10 games in his second season and had them #2 in the CFP going into the final game of the regular season. Yes, I’d call that a fairly substantial turnaround
So he built upon what Golden had begun to the result of winning one more regular season game in year 2? And regressed to a worse season than Golden’s last in year 3? You’re making it sound like he took a 0-12 team and turned them into a bow team. He won ONE more regular season game. Golden: 8-4 Richt: 8-4 Richt: 9-3 Richt: 7-5 Amazing work, Mark Richt
Yeah, no. You should learn to read Wikipedia a little closer Al Golden went 4-3 his last year, including a 56-0 loss at home to Clemson in his last game. He got fired and then Larry Scott went 4-1 as the interim Golden was 6-7 the year before that. in 2013 he had his best year at 9-4 (with the best roster Miami had from 2010-2020) and he was 7-5 and 6-6 his first two years Richt went 9-4 in his first year and 10-3 year 2. It was a major turnaround on the defensive side of the ball almost immediately due to scheme change
He was terrible at Miami! Terrible hire! :throws a bag of piss at elderly man in an ND hat: We never offered Tommy Rees! 2017!!!!! Just getting that out of the way.
Any Miami fan that isn't RageCane will tell you at Golden may still very well be our HC today if he simply got rid of his butt buddy. His offenses put up points and he recruited at a high level, which was evident given the success had early in his tenure.
If he can recruit and can call a D on game day we’ll be happy. That’s really all our DC will need to go. also doesn’t hurt that he was a HC now that our staff is young as hell.
I don't see whats wrong with hiring him as a DC when the HC is a defensive guy already. Also Golden he's proven to be a pretty good Lber coach. Hell the best Lbers Miami has had over the last decade were guys he recruited (or started recruiting in the case on SHaq and Pink).
I personally think it's a solid hire, assuming he's calling Freeman's D. Certainly doesn't hurt that he has HC experience
That move almost cost Brian Kelly his job when Brian Van Gorder, so we can relate. We were lucky our AD has bigger balls than BK. This may work, it may not. But it checks a lot of boxes that ND needs: experience, scheme versatility and coaching up LBs to be specific.
When he was a LB coach and DC he most certainly did. ND won't exactly be putting him in charge of Dante Moore's recruitment.
If anything Miami has proven that it's a stable and supportive environment where any coach can reach his full potential, so Golden failing there is clear evidence he's a shit coach and should never work again.
That game did suck, for the record. That and 2019 Michigan were the only times after the Brian Kelly reboot following 2016 where the team just quit and were completely outclassed by a non-playoff caliber team. There were other losses, but they didn't look like that.
He guided us through a really difficult time in our history and the jabs Miami fans take are really around his refusal to fire D'Onfrio and some of the other cheesy antics
The reactions of people pissy at Miami fans is funny to me. Guy had some of the worst defenses in Miami history while he was here and did dick all to fix those issues. Manny Diaz/Richt literally came in and fixed Miami’s defensive issues in 1 or 2 seasons. He was fucking awful at adjusting for personnel and just kept trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. Guy is a hell of a linebacker coach but I wouldn’t want him anywhere near the play calling sheet. Like I said the reactions in here are just weird to me. I’m glad you like the hire but the last time he had a large amount of control over the direction of a defense and the play calling that was going on with it, it was historically awful. Good luck
I mean, all of that is correct, but it doesn't sound like he'll have much control, if any on their defense with Freeman there.
I don't really understand the purpose of hiring Golden to run a defense that isn't his. Freeman will clearly be involved, but why wouldn't you just hire someone who has worked with Freeman before in that scenario? I have the same question with Michigan, which just hired Minter to seemingly run MacDonald's defense. I don't really see the point in that.
Golden was the worst HC we've had, even worse than Diaz/Randy. He somehow managed to completely insult/piss off Teddy B within the first 5 minutes of recruiting him, lost Cooper the same way and did jack shit with talented rosters that he refused to adapt his scheme around and that doesn't even include the "cloud" he used as an excuse so he recruit bum ass kids from Delaware and NJ to play for him because local kids all knew he was a fraud from their friends on the team and wouldn't buy into his shit. I'm pretty sure CF3234 was in the building or had a close friend in the building at that time and can corroborate what a clown he was. None of the above really matters as a DC elsewhere although he's not a good recruiter. We got sold that bill of goods too when he was hired and it was proven over and over again to be false.
Do we have actual confirmation of that? Once again I don’t get the vitriol being aimed at Miami fans for accurately pointing out what happened last time golden had significant say over play calling and direction of a defense. It’s weird, and dump you have no dog in this fight so why do you even care
So it sounds like Notre Dame got a good LB coach as DC. I highly doubt the head coach and proven defensive coordinator is going to let Al fucking Golden come in and just take the reigns but what do I know.
I guess we’ll see what happens, if he’s only being brought in to handle linebackers it’s a great hire but I do wonder why a guy would leave the nfl especially a team that was 1 drive away from winning a title to work the same job in college….
My guess is he wants another shot as a CFB HC. If he gets one and fails, it doesn't hurt us, because that would mean ND's defense probably performed well. And believe it or not, ND's DC will probably be paid higher than LB coach under Mike Brown.
I was in the building for year 1. but knew plenty of people who were there the entire tenure. Year 1 was mostly good vibes as it was clear that Al was more competent than Randy Shannon (not hard to do at all) Spring ball after year 1 is when the cracks started to show. He would constantly do shit like change the location of practice 20 minutes before it started which caused all sorts of mayhem for the equipment and video staffs who would need to drop everything and re-arrange all the on field stuff to accommodate which had the trickle down effect of delaying the start of practice and then once practice started everything would be a cluster fuck because everything had to be done haphazardly. He created a really tight inner circle and if you weren't in it, he treated you like garbage. Where he really burned bridges was in recruiting. If you had a connection to a recruit but weren't in his circle, he blew you off completely. There were a bunch of really easy misses that have had long lasting impacts. No bigger than the Cooper and Bridgewater like Gritty said. I remember a going away lunch we did at the end of spring ball for a long time staffer who would have stayed forever but hated Al where an assistant coach drunkenly admitted that Al was a good coach, but would never be great. I spoke with him again towards the end of Al's tenure and he knew that this job would be his last in CFB because there was no coming back from the damage Al had done to his reputation. Al essentially went out of his way to shoot himself in the face at every opportunity. Perfect example is the Penn State job. He overplayed his hand so much that any good will he had among the rank and file in the Hecht was completely gone. It was so bad that by the time he was fired, pretty much the entire support staff (equipment staff, video staff, secretaries, compliance,) etc that were all UM lifers had either retired or left to go work elsewhere. The best description I have for Al Golden is that he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room while never actually being the smartest guy in the room.