Marcus Freeman Grades Out as Linebacker Coach, Not Coordinator, in Hypothetical All-Star Staff Ranking
Notre Dame's head coach would fill a position-coach slot if hired purely on technical expertise, raising questions about coordinator succession planning.
Published July 5, 2026Source MSNFrom the chopped neck
Marcus Freeman Grades Out as Linebacker Coach, Not Coordinator, in Hypothetical All-Star Staff Ranking
Notre Dame's head coach would fill a position-coach slot if hired purely on technical expertise, raising questions about coordinator succession planning.
A college football thought experiment published this week places Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman in the linebacker-coach tier of a hypothetical all-star coaching staff, one rung below the coordinator roles that often precede head-coaching jumps. The analysis, which evaluates sitting Power Four head coaches by their technical coaching skill independent of program management, assigns Freeman to position-coach duty rather than defensive coordinator—the role he held at Cincinnati before Notre Dame hired him in 2021.
The premise: if a program could assemble an unlimited-budget staff by hiring current head coaches for their pure coaching ability, where would each land? Freeman, 39, ranks as a top-shelf linebacker developer but falls short of the coordinator tier occupied by names like Dan Lanning (Oregon) or Kirby Smart (Georgia), both of whom ran entire defenses at Alabama before taking head jobs. The gap matters because coordinator experience has become table stakes for the next wave of athletic-director hires. Freeman's path—linebackers coach to coordinator to head coach in 13 months—is now an outlier. Most AD search firms want three years of coordinator tape.
Notre Dame pays Freeman $7.5 million annually and extended him through 2030 after a 10-2 regular season. But the Irish have not produced a first-round NFL linebacker since Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah in 2021, Freeman's first spring on campus. That draft gap shows up in recruiting: Notre Dame signed zero five-star linebackers in the 2024 and 2025 classes, while Ohio State signed three. The position-coach ranking reflects that: Freeman's technical skill is respected, but the linebacker pipeline has not separated from peers.
The coordinator question also surfaces in Freeman's staff structure. Al Golden, Notre Dame's defensive coordinator, earns $2.0 million and calls the defense. Freeman does not call plays on game day. That setup—a head coach who delegates the coordinator role he previously held—is common in the NFL but rare in college, where head coaches typically retain their coordinator identity for recruiting credibility. When Freeman interviewed for head jobs in 2021, his selling point was defensive vision. Now that vision is Golden's to execute, and Freeman's role is closer to CEO than coordinator.
The ranking also matters for Freeman's next move, if Notre Dame underperforms. Athletic directors hiring in 2026 or 2027 will compare Freeman's resume to candidates with sustained coordinator success: names like Oklahoma State's defensive coordinator Bryan Nardo or Penn State's offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki, both of whom have called plays for four-plus seasons. Freeman's one season as Cincinnati's coordinator—2020, a COVID-shortened schedule—will look thin. The linebacker-coach tier is not an insult; it is a signal that his technical specialty has not yet aged into the coordinator credibility that protects head coaches during rough years.
Notre Dame opens the 2025 season against Ohio State in the playoff semifinal rematch, a game that will test Golden's scheme against the Buckeyes' quarterback rotation. If the Irish defense holds, Freeman's coordinator delegation looks prescient. If it breaks, the question becomes whether Freeman has the coordinator chops to take back the headset.
The all-star staff exercise is hypothetical, but the coordinator gap is not. Freeman's next contract negotiation, likely in 2026 if Notre Dame stays above nine wins, will hinge on whether athletic director Pete Bevacqua views him as a program CEO or a defensive mind who needs Golden to execute. The difference is worth $2 million in annual salary and the length of the buyout.
Freeman's agent, Trace Armstrong, represents multiple NFL head coaches and understands the coordinator-credibility problem. Expect Armstrong to push for a title adjustment—"head coach / defensive coordinator"—in the next deal, even if Freeman does not call plays. The optics matter when the next AD search firm builds its board.
The takeaway
Freeman's one-season coordinator resume creates succession risk if Notre Dame's defense falters and AD searches favor multi-year playcallers.
notre damemarcus freemancoaching staffcoordinatorsuccession planningcollege football
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