Report: Chicago Bears interview Notre Dame offensive line coach Joe Rudolph

If Notre Dame has learned anything about the coaching carousel the last couple offseasons, it’s that it doesn’t stop spinning as soon as anyone would like it to. That seems to be the case again this year.

According to Nate Tice of the Football 301 podcast, the Chicago Bears have interest in Notre Dame offensive line coach Joe Rudolph for the same position.

“It looks like they’re interviewing some college guys, including one I’m familiar with, Joe Rudolph, who is the offensive line coach at Notre Dame,” Tice said on Jan. 28.

Tice was a quarterback at Wisconsin when Rudolph was the tight ends coach there from 2008-11. Tice has since worked as an NFL scout and for various media outlets covering the league, including The Athletic and Yahoo Sports.

Rudolph, meanwhile, has been the offensive line coach at Notre Dame for the last two seasons. He came over to South Bend following seven seasons as Wisconsin’s offensive line coach and one as Virginia Tech’s. Rudolph began his coaching career as an Ohio State graduate assistant from 2004-06. He’s remained in the college game ever since, never having coached in the NFL.

The 52-year-old Pennsylvania native and alum of Wisconsin is credited with keeping an injury-riddled Notre Dame offensive line as intact as possible through last week’s national championship game.

Notre Dame lost its starting center, Ashton Craig, and a starting guard, Billy Schrauth, to injury in Week 3. The Fighting Irish lost projected left tackle starter Charles Jagusah to a long-term pectoral injury in the first week of fall camp. Those ailments left Rudolph with early-season decisions to make, and he pulled the right strings.

Rudolph sent out an offensive line with six combined starts among the five players in the season opener at Texas A&M, and the contingent held up nicely against one of the best defensive lines in the country in a 23-13 Notre Dame victory. His unit got better and better and turned into a Joe Moore Award semifinalist by the end of the year.

So far, Notre Dame has only lost one on-field assistant coach since the end of the season. Defensive coordinator Al Golden took the same job with the Cincinnati Bengals. Off the field, general manager Chad Bowden assumed the same position with the USC Trojans. Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman is still on the hunt for replacements for those two departures.

With February just a couple days away, spring practices are right around the corner. Any further coaching changes put Freeman in a time crunch in trying to have his staff finalized by the start of them.