Everything Notre Dame DC Chris Ash said in summer sit-down with Blue & Gold

Blue & Gold sat down with Chris Ash and one other local media outlet in South Bend this month for a 20-minute conversation about his experience so far as the Notre Dame defensive coordinator and what he expects from his Fighting Irish defense this fall and moving forward beyond that.

This is everything Ash said.

On if he installed a ‘base’ defense at Notre Dame like he did at Ohio State

“Oh, wow, that’s a long time ago. That was about 11 years ago if my memory serves me right. So things have changed quite a bit since then. Every situation is different. The situation I walked into at Ohio State versus the one here are completely different. It’s not even fair to compare the two. The plan of action that we took there compared to here is just different.”

On teaching a ‘match-man’ defense

“I can get where you’re going with the question, I’ll tell you this; I get asked this all the time. People trying to find out what we’re doing on defense. We’re running the Notre Dame defense, okay? That’s what I can tell you. Okay, what is the Notre Dame defense? We’re not necessarily doing anything different than what’s been done here in the past. We’re trying to develop all areas of the defense with things that have been done here with a blend of some maybe new thoughts and ideas. But we’re running the Notre Dame defense.

“What does that mean? We’re gonna play fast, we’re gonna play aggressive, we’re gonna be fundamentally sound, situationally aware, and we’re gonna do what we need to do to win games based on the players that we have and who we play from week to week. And does that mean we’re playing man? Does it mean we’re playing man-match zone? We’re playing vision or break zone? It could be any of those things based on what we have to do and who we have healthy on our roster to go play each Saturday. That is the best way I can answer that question. I don’t know if that necessarily answers the question.

Reporter: “It does, to a point.”

Ash: “Yeah, to a point. But I know what your point is, and I’m trying to, if you can’t tell, hit your point without truly hitting the point.”

On Drayk Bowen earning respect from Notre Dame coaches and teammates

“He’s just trying to be a pro and do his job. He leads by example. He’s one of those guys that is constantly studying the game. He takes great notes. He comes prepared every single day. He’s one of the guys that’s not afraid to speak up when someone needs to speak up. And when he goes out there on the practice field, he’s going to try to play with great effort, fundamentals, and try to execute his job every single rep. And when you got guys who do that, people naturally are going look up to him.

“He’s a guy that’s played a lot of football around here, and I think he’s a smart, tough, accountable player and people look up to those type of guys.”

On Bowen asserting himself as the ‘alpha dog in the room’

“Well, he’s just trying to still get comfortable in that role because that’s really not been what he has done. But that’s what we need him to do. And he’s still kind of figuring that part of it out. But definitely being a leader by example, and he’s finding his opportunities to be more vocal when he needs to be.”

On how quickly he figured out Leonard Moore was a ‘dude’

“It took me about three or four plays into the film that I watched when I first got here. It didn’t take long. And then it didn’t take long out of practice. He’s been our boundary corner and there are not a lot of completions over in that area. Usually when it’s a quiet day for someone like that at corner, you know he’s probably pretty good.”

On what makes Moore so good at what he does

“It’s everything. I mean, if you were to draw up or write up the characteristics that you want in a corner, he’s got them all. He’s long. He’s athletic. He’s quick. He’s fast. He’s tough. He practices extremely hard. He’s consistently doing the right things. He’s instinctive. When he takes a chance, it’s usually to make a play. And that’s usually what he does. He’s got a short memory. He doesn’t give up many plays, but when he does, he moves on to the next play. So, again, if you were to write up the prototypical corner that you would like to have playing for you, he’s probably gonna be a good one to start with.”

Reporter: “It seems like more and more of these guys are able to do that as an 18-, 19-year-old freshman.”

Ash: “I haven’t seen too many like him.”

Reporter: “I guess it’s only here.”

Ash: “He’s rare. The size, the combination of size and ability that he has, is rare. There are a lot of guys that have some ability, but they’re typically not as big as him. I mean, he’s a big corner. And what he can do athletically with his size is pretty impressive.”

On how he challenges the safeties this summer and in the fall to get to a point of feeling comfortable for the season opener and beyond

“I don’t know if challenging is the right [word]. It’s just, you throw a lot at them. See how what they can handle. Our job is to— someone’s gotta go play, and we need to have depth. We got to have several guys ready. But we’ve got to do a great job of understanding their mental capacity. At safety, you’re an essential communicator. You gotta make a lot of checks, you gotta make a lot of adjustments, you gotta do it quick, you gotta be a great communicator. If you overload them, usually a lot of those things start to diminish. And we need to make sure that we can get them to all those things and understand what the threshold is that they can handle and what they can’t. That’s really the challenge for us as much as it is the challenge for them — how much can they handle? We’ll keep pushing the envelope, but we also need to know, hey, when this player is out here, this is what he can do, and we need to do it. So it’s more on us as much as anything.”

On what he saw from Tae Johnson in the spring

“Well, I didn’t know much about him to be honest with you. And then we get out there and this safety starts showing up and flashing and making a lot of plays. He’s got good size. He can run. He’s getting his hands on balls and you can see him breaking out of the middle. I’m like, man, who the hell is this? That’s when I really started to figure out who he was. He just, all spring, just flashed and made plays.

“Now, he’s not perfect. He gave up some as well like people do. But he definitely showed some big-play potential here this spring.”

On what he’s learned about what it takes to join and lead a Notre Dame defense that has previously been successful

“I mean, it starts to just check your ego at the door. When you’ve been in it as long as I have, you you realize it’s not about you. It’s about us. That’s just the approach that that I took with his job. This has nothing to do with me. I’ve been lucky to be dropped into a great situation with really good people, and it’s my job to blend myself into what’s been done here. Ingrain myself in the culture and just find ways in my role to enhance it and figure out how we can continue to play at a high level and find ways to get better at certain things. But that’s where it all starts. It’s about leadership and providing a high level of leadership and that starts with just checking the ego at the door and understand this this has nothing to do with me. This has everything to do with helping the other guys on the staff and the players that have been here continue to improve and be the best that they could be.”

On what he’s seen on film from Boubacar Traore and Jordan Botelho that excites him

“I just look at the group the defensive end group in general — I think there’s several playmakers there. Those guys, they’ve got length, they’re explosive, they’re physical. They can rush the passer, they can play the run, they can drop in coverage if they need to. There’s a lot of things that those guys can do. But as I look at just the end position, there are several guys that can do that. The guys that we had in spring, those two guys come back — I think it’s a pretty strong group.”

On Notre Dame’s self-scouting this offseason

“You go through a practice and after every practice you really try to do a great job of evaluating that practice. And then when they’re all over, you go through and reevaluate what you did. All the calls. You look at the drills, the fundamental development, the scheme development, what we’re asking players to do — can they do it? Because we threw a lot at them in the spring and now we got to reevaluate. All right, the players that we have, can they do what we’re asking them to do. Are we doing what we need to do to continue to try to help them improve and enhance? And that’s it’s an ongoing process.

“I spent a lot of time by myself post-spring of going through that, taking notes, and then when the staff, we all got back together after recruiting, we’ve been going back through and talking about the list of things that I saw, picking their brains and getting their opinions on what they saw with their particular groups. And then we kind of formulated a game plan to to attack some of those things here this summer and not wait until training camp.

On getting better at what Notre Dame is already good at vs. improving some weaker spots

“It’s all of the above. There is no exact formula. It’s what you feel you can do best, you continue to enhance. The areas that you need to improve on, you find a way to formulate a plan to get that done. You don’t just keep doing the things that you do or just focus on the things that you’re not doing well. You gotta continue to grow both of them. Because if you take time off of the things that you do well, guess what’s gonna happen to those things? Probably not gonna continue to do them at the level that you want. So, yeah, we’re trying to work both of those areas together.”

On what drove him to adopt left and right defensive ends instead of field end and Vyper

“There are a lot of factors that play into that. First of all, you look at the players. Is there a difference in their ability? Are you asking guys to do something different? When we really looked at last season and what we’re looking to do? No, there’s not. There there are a lot of similar abilities there. Then you look at, how can you get lined up with quickly against teams that go really fast? Going left and right is the easiest thing to do. They don’t have to worry about, where’s the field? Where’s the boundary? Where’s the open side, closed side? So that’s another part of it.

“And then you look at the matchups. Is there a reason to put a particular player to this side or that side or this position to exploit a possible mismatch? So we looked at all of those things as we were trying to make a decision. That’s just, like, when you talk about enhancements, that’s one of the things that, to me, looked like an opportunity to enhance the play of a particular position by doing that. So far, so good. They really have enjoyed it. There haven’t been any real hiccups or struggles with it. All the feedback that I was given at the end of the spring from the players is that they really enjoyed it and thought it was better.”

On Notre Dame linebackers coach Max Bullough

“Max is a great young coach. Got a lot of enthusiasm and energy. Really studies the game. Has a good knowledge of the game from his playing days. He played at in Michigan State. They played a high level of defense. He’s worked at Alabama. They know how to coach some defense there. Then he’s been here for several years now. He’s had some high-level exposure to the game. When you match that with his desire to to be great and studying the game and ability to relate and get along with others, I think he’s got a really bright future.”

On Notre Dame defensive backs coach Mike Mickens

“He’s general kind of a quiet guy. That’s the unique thing about coaching. I shouldn’t say coaching; that’s the great thing about Coach Freeman and the environment he’s created — everyone feels free to be himself. Everyone has this vision at times, a coach has got to be a rah-rah guy, get in your face type of guy. No, you don’t. Like, be yourself. Players have a lot more respect for guys that are real and authentic and they are who they are.

“Mike will pick and choose his time to get on a player, get in a player’s face, love him up, blow him up — whatever you wanna call it. He has that in him. He just picks and chooses his time in it. That’s not what he does every every snap. But what Mike does is, he does a great job of relating with the players, getting to know the players. Trying to get the best out of them. They respect him for that. He’s a student of the game. He’s played the game. He’s a coach to the high level. So he understands the Xs and Os, the fundamentals, and it’s more about the relationships that he’s created with the guys. They trust him, they believe in him, and when he he says something, they’re gonna listen. It’s how to get him to go out here on the practice field, and obviously they played at a high level in games for him as well. So that’s really what it comes down to more than anything; he is who he is, he’s authentic and real, and he creates genuine relationships with these guys that they listen to and trust what he says.”

On what it is about Marcus Freeman that’s made him a successful young coach

“A lot of it has to do with just what I’ve talked about with a position coach. The first thing you notice about Marcus is he is who he is; he’s real, he’s authentic — he’s not trying to be somebody else. A lot of times, coaches get a job, they get a coordinator job, a head coaching job, and they’ve coached under this person, that person, or they’ve watched this person, they think they’ve got to be somebody else, they got to lead a different way, they’ve got change who they are. He hasn’t. He is who he is. He leads a particular way. That’s where it all starts.

“And then the second thing, just looking at the overall organization, he’s done a great job of hiring people that he can trust, that are gonna do their job at a high level, they believe in a lot of the same things that he believes in. When you are who you are, you lead in a way that makes people feel appreciated and really enjoy coming to work and being in your environment, and you’re able to surround yourself with other great people — he screwed up one hire, me, so I’m I’m excluded from that group — but you got a chance for success. That’s what I see. It starts that he is who he is, and that’s not gonna change.”

On what a good season would look like for Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa

“I don’t know if I can say there are requirements that he has to meet to say it was a good season. There’s a lot of competition in our linebacker room, and there’s got a lot of guys that are gonna play. A good season is that he continues to improve, he’s playing his best football at the end of the season, he’s helping our defense win. That would be, probably to me, a definition of a good season and a successful one.

“How many tackles or interceptions or sacks or TFLs he gets, there’s not a number that’s gonna define his season. It’s just, does he continue to get better? Can he help our football team win? Is he a great teammate? I think he’s all of those, and I think that’s probably gonna define his season.”

How he prepares for a Miami team that looks so different this year because of the transfer portal

“Every year an offense or a defense can change based off of just what they feel they need to do schematically or the players that they have. In this type of situation, you gotta look at what Carson [Beck] did at Georgia, what were his strengths, what were his weaknesses, what did he do well? How does that fit into what Miami did last year and maybe try to identify some things they maybe could do different with him. But at the end of the day in game one, it’s about you more than it is about them. It’ll be a game of adjustments for us. That’s what a game one always is. Our play style and the way we want a play has to show up and we’ll adjust as we go through a game. But we’ll study Miami from last year. We’ll study Carson’s film from Georgia. But at the end of the day, for me, it’s more important about how we show up, how we play, how we execute, the fundamentals we use and how we bring those calls to life on defense.”

On how he evaluates success for the Notre Dame defense

“There’s signs of success that you look at each week in a game and through the course of the year that help you determine, are there certain areas that you have to look at? But at the end of the day, our job is to do what? Play great defense that helps us win games. The numbers, obviously, you want them to all be great, but I’m not worried about the numbers. I’m worried about, are we helping our football team win? And there’s a lot that goes into that. We just got to monitor that as we go every single practice, every single game and keep working on the things that we need to get better at and make sure we’re enhancing the things that we do well and that we show up and are consistent every week. We’ll have some goals, we’ll have things that we’ll look at, but, hey, if we’re winning games and we’re a part of that then we’re playing good defense.”