Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM APRIL 2025 9 UNDER THE DOME sas defensive coordinator, Ohio State co-DC and Rutgers head coach at the helm. Some of the fundamentals that the players are taught might change, too. But the concepts that the Irish will run in 2025 will look a lot like the ones they ran in 2023 and 2024. Ash was emphatic about this, and he stressed it multiple times — un- prompted at first — during his presser. "If it's not broke, don't fix it," Ash said. "There has been really good foot- ball played on defense. There's been standards. There's been accountability. They've been well coached. … At the end of the day, the way Notre Dame has played defense is the way Notre Dame is gonna play defense in the future." That applies both to the schematics at play and the culture in South Bend. Multiple times in the weeks before his departure, Golden stressed just how strong the culture was on defense. Though Golden would never say it out loud, he played a large part in creating it. So did Freeman, and so did the players. Asked about his philosophy regarding players adapting to their coordinator ver- sus coordinators adapting to their players, Ash leaned hard toward the latter. "I'm here to become one of them," Ash said. "They're not here to adjust to me. I'm here to adjust to them. The staff, the players, the scheme, the whole overall culture of the organization. That's what I'm coming to be a part of." 'IT WAS NOTRE DAME' Seider had it good at Penn State. His family was entrenched there. He worked for the man he proclaimed the "best" CEO-style head coach he'd ever been around in James Franklin for seven going on eight seasons. He developed and utilized two of the best running backs in college football in Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen. And yet, he still left State College, Pa., for South Bend. He was formally introduced as Notre Dame's running backs coach in a press conference Feb. 26. "It was just — it was Notre Dame," Seider said. "It was Marcus Freeman." Freeman and the Fighting Irish have that level of pulling power right now. "It's almost like, I'm telling my wife sometimes, like talking to myself," Se- ider said of Freeman. "I talk to him, I'm talking to myself." That connection came about through former Notre Dame offensive coordina- tor Gerad Parker. Seider first met and worked with Parker at Marshall in 2011. They teamed up together at Penn State in 2019, too. By then, Parker was a cou- ple stops away from Notre Dame. Little did Seider know, with the gentlest of prodding from Parker, he's always been just one stop away from South Bend in his own coaching career. "It was good to just have somebody who understands both of us, who un- derstands Notre Dame and worked at Penn State," Seider said of Parker. "So, when you're making a tough deci- sion like this, it's always good to have a friend that doesn't try to talk you into something. Doesn't try to talk you out of something. Just listens and kind of goes through his experience of what he'd been through and how special he felt Notre Dame stood for him and his family." Seider never needed much selling, even with how great things were going for him at Penn State. He'd grown ac- customed to turning down offseason job offers year after year. This time, though, he didn't feel like saying no. Not to Notre Dame. Not to Freeman. Not to a new chapter in his coaching ca- reer, one that began as a running backs coach at a high school in Florida and now has him following in the footsteps of a running backs coach in Deland Mc- Cullough who parlayed his success in South Bend into a life-changing oppor- tunity to work for Pete Carroll with the Las Vegas Raiders. The Raiders are what is right for Mc- Cullough after three years at Notre Dame. Notre Dame is what is right for Seider after seven years at Penn State. He bid farewell to Singleton and Al- len on good terms, and he's being wel- comed with open arms by Jeremiyah Love, Jadarian Price and the rest of the Irish tailbacks. The only thing that stays the same is that everything changes. Not all changes are so bad. Change can be good. Seider sees it that way so far. ✦ UNDER THE DOME Seider is entering his 16th season coaching college running backs and his 19th in collegiate coaching. PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME ATHLETICS