What separates Notre Dame football players according to defensive coordinator Al Golden
It doesn’t matter where Al Golden goes. The Notre Dame defensive coordinator is always asked the same thing.
What’s it like going from coaching NFL players — a group of guys who nearly won the Super Bowl six months ago — to college players, many of whom are not yet old enough to belly up to the bar and buy themselves a beer?
“It’s an interesting question,” Golden said Monday. “It’s one that recruits have asked me.”
PROMOTION: Sign up for just $1 for your first year at Blue & Gold
If it has the attention of prospective players, then you know it’s important.
Golden was the Cincinnati Bengals’ linebackers coach during their run to the Super Bowl, where they fell narrowly to the Los Angeles Rams, this past season. He spent six seasons as an NFL assistant after being the head coach at the University of Miami from 2011-15. He was at the head coach at Temple from 2006-10 after spending a decade-plus as an assistant at Virginia, Boston College and Penn State, his alma mater.
Golden knows both sides, college and pro. He knows what separates the two. Namely, maturity — physical and mental. He’s seen less of those differences at Notre Dame than he might have first anticipated upon taking the job in February.
Or maybe not.
More Notre Dame football
• JD Bertrand’s outlook after leading Notre Dame in tackles? Competing for a job
• ‘Boulder’ on his shoulder, why it might be now or never for Notre Dame QB Drew Pyne
It’s likely he knew exactly what he was walking into. It was going to take a lot for Golden to leave the NFL and go back to college, especially with how much has changed with NCAA football and everything that comes with it in this era. An opportunity to be on the staff at a place like Notre Dame qualified as “a lot.” Golden accepted the offer, and it has been everything he imagined it could be.
“I can’t speak on being back at any other university right now, but I know being at Notre Dame the difference isn’t much,” Golden said. “We have a group of guys who are really smart. They’re football guys. You’re not trying to track them down to get to the weight room or trying to get them to go to class. These guys are on it every day.”
That’s always been the book on Notre Dame student-athletes, but it probably comes off as no more than a cliche until you actually get on campus and see it for yourself. Golden has done more than see it. He’ lived it. He’s been in the trenches with dozens of Notre Dame football players for an entire slate of spring practices and now a handful of fall camp sessions too.
He can finally say for himself that it’s not a cliche at all. It’s real.
“They’re goal-oriented,” Golden said. “They’re focused on what they want to do, and they’re dying for you to coach them. They’re dying to learn every day.”
