On3 coach survey: Notre Dame’s Tommy Rees ‘deserving’ of head coach consideration
On3 national college reporter Matt Zenitz surveyed college coaches from across the country to see who they view as ready and deserving of head coach consideration. The survey only included coaches under 55 years old who have not been a head coach previously.
There were 25 names who came up frequently in Zentz’s survey, and one of them was Notre Dame offensive coordinator Tommy Rees.
Rees, 30, played for Notre Dame from 2010-13 and threw for 7,351 yards with 61 touchdowns and 37 interceptions. He spent a season at Northwestern in 2015 as a graduate assistant before spending the following year as an offensive assistant with the Los Angeles Chargers (the team was still in San Diego at that time).
He joined the Notre Dame staff in 2017 as the Irish quarterbacks coach and added offensive coordinator to his job duties in 2020. He spurned his old coach and boss, Brian Kelly, by not taking the offensive coordinator job at LSU over the offseason and staying with his alma mater.
“To me, the rallying of Notre Dame and the people that have touched this program and I’ve come across in my time here, their ability to offer support to the entire program and to me individually was overwhelming,” Rees said in December. “That’s something that speaks volumes about this place.”
Notre Dame has gone 21-4 since Rees took over as the Irish offensive coordinator, which includes a College Football Playoff berth in 2020. Notre Dame’s offense ranked 19th nationally in scoring last year.
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More Notre Dame related names on the list
Former Irish running backs coach Lance Taylor, who is in his first season with the Louisville Cardinals, was included in the survey. He served at Notre Dame from 2019-21 and was planning on staying in South Bend for Marcus Freeman‘s first year as the Irish’s head coach, but he couldn’t turn down Louisville’s opportunity.
Taylor also worked as the Carolina Panthers wide receivers coach from 2017-18 and Stanford running backs coach from 2014-16.
A pair of first-year Notre Dame assistants were noted as honorable mentions per Zentiz’s article — defensive line coach Al Washington and running backs coach Deland McCullough.
“I have seen firsthand how talented Al Washington is as a coach,” Freeman said of Washington after hiring him. “He is a great teacher and developer of his players on the field, but is just as impressive in how he goes about building great men off the field. On top of that, he is a passionate recruiter whose work in that area is going to help us compete for a national title.”
“Deland is as dynamic as you will find in our game when it comes to helping players reach, and at times even exceed, their potential,” said Freeman. “I have admired his work from a distance for several years, and I am so excited for our running backs to be able to bring in a coach who is going to get the most out of them on the field and also help them achieve their goals off of the field.”
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