Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1544783
BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM SUMMER 2026 9 UNDER THE DOME that our players and our young people can understand? "And I say that, because in order to do that, the relationship between the coor‑ dinators and the position coaches have to be one of synergy. Like, they have to understand each other and know when to give ideas and when to just listen to the call or listen to the philosophy. 'This is what we're doing. Go teach it.'" That's where picking the right re‑ placements came into play. Ash had prior relationships with two of the three, Partridge and Henry. He goes way back with the former; the pair played together at Drake University from 1992‑95. Their coaching careers intertwined at their alma mater, Wis‑ consin and Arkan‑ sas. While they were with the Badgers, they coached Henry, who was a safety in Madison, Wis., from 2007‑11. Henry also coached for Ash in Ash's first year as the head coach at Rutgers in 2016. Yet even with all of the familiarity he has with Partridge and Henry, Ash treated their addition to the Notre Dame coaching staff as a ground‑zero launch‑ ing point. It wasn't ever going to be a seamless transition from the departed trio to the new set of three arriving. Proper integration was a time‑sensitive and intensive chore requiring attention and diligence. Ash made sure that started with the players. "It was a lot of work," Ash said. "And I'm going to give a lot of credit to our players. Back in January, I kind of really threw a challenge down to them, like, 'Hey, you've got to transition. It is what it is. But we need to make sure that we get connected and we build a relation‑ ship with the new coaches really fast because we don't have a lot of time left before we go out to spring. I want these guys to coach you the way that you need to be coached.' "These players invested a lot of time to get to know their coaches. And what we were able to accomplish this spring, the improvement of every player, the units, it's really a credit to the players and what they've done." Ash said the coaches reciprocated the investment, which was also mandatory. Acculturation is a two‑way endeavor. "The amount of time they spent with the players was impressive," Ash said. The coaches put their egos (every coach has one) aside and really focused on immersing themselves in all things Notre Dame before they broke out their own tricks of the trade, which will end up being mostly a preseason installation tactic after prioritizing connection and association in the first half of the year. There is a method to the madness of getting everyone on the same page. "They do have some new ideas and new things, different ways to coach po‑ sitionally, but our system is our system," Ash said. "And this spring was to really just build on that, and then we'll worry about some new things in training camp and that's kind of where we're at." Some of those new things didn't need to be pushed off until August, however. Defensive end Boubacar Traore, for instance, said he learned things from Partridge that were previously foreign concepts to him. Partridge has NFL coaching experi‑ ence, which Washington did not, so, naturally, there were new techniques Traore picked up on in the spring with‑ out Partridge having to force them on him. When they popped up, Traore in‑ ternalized them, and now he has a much more vast skill set. He can be a com‑ pletely different player in 2026 than he's ever been before, in part because of simply having a new voice in his ear. Having studied the former version of Traore and seeing him practice in March and April, Partridge can visu‑ alize the transformation of the player who should be his No. 1 pass rusher this season. "I have seen strides," Partridge said. "I'm feeling the unit, which obviously includes him, rushing together. Making intelligent choices around the quarter‑ back, understanding where the weak spots are in lanes based on protection and/or call. I think he's taken big strides that way, and I'm proud of him for that." It can be that way for players at every level of Notre Dame's defense. M ayb e A l l ‑A m e r i ca co r n e rba c k Leonard Moore, for example, hangs on to everything he learned from Mick‑ ens while adding new approaches to his arsenal gleaned from Henry. Same for safeties Adon Shuler and Brauntae Johnson as well as every other player in Notre Dame's vaunted secondary. Perhaps Bowen sees something from Jean‑Mary that Bullough never harped on and the Notre Dame team captain revolutionizes his attack in his final season in a Fighting Irish uniform. Jay‑ len Sneed has been at Notre Dame for going on half a de‑ cade. It's possible his fifth and final season with the Irish is also his best be‑ cause of an awakening brought on by a more well‑rounded understanding of the position he plays that only comes from learning from someone new. "It's been great," Sneed said of Jean‑ Mary becoming his position coach. "He's come in here, he's been adamant about us getting better. He's been ada‑ mant about it not being last year and ways we can get better. He's been ada‑ mant about us meeting and really learn‑ ing the little things. He wants us to learn formations and what the quarterback does, what the O‑linemen are looking at. Just small things like that that have really helped me." It all reinforces the idea that change does not have to be a bad thing. It's what you make of it. By most accounts, the changes made to Notre Dame's coaching staff this offseason might only make a team that already possessed serious national cham‑ pionship aspirations even more likely to turn those dreams into reality. "I've been really excited and pleased with the connection that the players and new coaches have had," Ash said. "I really, really like what's been going on in their meetings, their communica‑ tion, their coaching, their alignment has been really good for us," Freeman added. ✦ "They do have some new ideas and new things, different ways to coach positionally, but our system is our system. And this spring was to really just build on that, and then we'll worry about some new things in training camp and that's kind of where we're at." NOTRE DAME DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR CHRIS ASH