Weis shakes up his coaching staff
ND head coach may also call the offensive plays from press box
Tony Ding / AP fileNotre Dame coach Charlie Weis has transformed his coaching staff in an effort to give the Irish a better chance at winning, writes Eric Hansen of NBCSports.com.
Schematically Irish fans will notice some subtle differences from last year. There won’t even be the pretense of a 3-4 alignment. And the constant blitzing and pressure ND fans thought they’d see last year should be more apparent in their expression in 2009.
"I’ve called defense for most of my life, so it’s not a big deal to me," Tenuta said. "Obviously, I’m excited about the opportunity and just to go forward with it. The pressure packages are what I’ve always done and what I’m going to continue to do."
"I’m all for making Notre Dame better," Brown said in a prepared statement. "If this will help us win more games next year, then I’m all for it. I’m the ultimate team guy. I’ve always been the ultimate team guy. One great thing about this coaching staff is that we do things together. Anything we can do to help the team win we will do collectively."
But it is a sacrifice. There are those in coaching circles who believe Brown has the highest ceiling on the staff as a potential head coach, and perhaps more tangible leadership skills than Weis himself. Not calling plays could slow Brown’s growth curve and lower his trajectory, at least temporarily.
“I think that a critical factor in successful programs is chemistry,” Weis said. “There has to be chemistry -- chemistry with the players, but there has to be chemistry with the coaching staff.
“It's not just the X's and O's. It's how everything's going to mix together, because coaches spend a lot of time together. You know, I spend a lot more time with the coaches during football season than I do with my family. I think that's an important thing.”
But Weis is still such a domineering part of the coaching chemistry, unless there is a seismic philosophical shift between now and the Sept. 5 opener with Nevada, it is his own growth that drives ND toward a BCS berth, a head coaching change or -- least likely -- something in between.
“One of the questions will be: Does that mean you're not going to spend any time with the defense or the special teams?” Weis said. “The answer to that question is during the season, it's just going to cost me more time in the evenings, because I'm going to have to spend more of my time with defense and special teams when we're done with offense. That's just a burden I figured I had to put on my own shoulders, and that's what I intend to do.”
Former Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White knew he wasn’t hiring a finished product when Weis replaced Willingham in December of 2004. He knew there would be a natural evolution from Super Bowl ring-wearing offensive coordinator to collegiate head coach.
Weis, to his credit, hasn’t become mired in dogma, and stuck in his successful-but-sometimes-painfully-irrelevant past. He has made changes when change was called for, and sometimes when it wasn’t. He has shown more resilience than progress, which is why the latest tweaking paints him into the expectation for not just a breakthrough year in 2009, but a breakthrough renaissance.
The one evolutionary step we can only guess about is the final one – whether Weis has transitioned from someone who is more concerned with controlling, coercing and choreographing to one who develops, inspires and catalyzes.
He is back outside the box, with a non-traditional coaching template and seemingly everything aligned – schedule, talent, staff – to shock the college football world all over again, as he did in 2005.
By the time Bryant selects and completes his first round of credits, we’ll know much more about whether he wants to stick in the business, whether Verducci meshed better with Weis than deposed O-line coach John Latina, whether Mike Haywood is missed, whether Alford can scoop up a Mainland version of Manti Te‘o.
But the person that 2009 will tell us most about is Weis, who he has become and where he is going.
Eric Hansen writes regularly for NBCSports.com's Notre Dame Central, and covers the Fighting Irish for the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune.
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