According to numerous reports on Wednesday afternoon, Chris Ash has accepted the position of defensive coordinator for Notre Dame football. Ash replaces Al Golden, the Irish defensive coordinator of the last three seasons who moved on to the Cincinnati Bengals in the same role less than a week prior.
The 51-year-old Ash has extensive coaching experience at the collegiate level and a taste of the National Football League as well. He played defensive tackle at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and began his career on the sidelines as a graduate assistant there in 1997.
After spending the next two years as Drake’s defensive coordinator, Ash specialized in defensive backs and recruiting over the following decade at Iowa State, San Diego State and Wisconsin. He then made the jump to power-conference defensive coordinator with the Badgers in 2011-12 before accepting the same role at Arkansas in 2013 and at Ohio State in 2014-15 as a co-coordinator. The Buckeyes won a national championship in the first of Ash’s two seasons with the program.
In 2016, Ash took his first and only head coaching job at Rutgers, finishing 8-32 across three-plus seasons in the Big Ten before a late-September firing in 2019. From there, he moved on to Texas, coordinating the Longhorns' defense and safeties in 2020.
Ash has spent the last four seasons in the NFL, working with the Jacksonville Jaguars as a safeties coach in 2021 and a scout in 2024. Between those two stops, he served as the defensive backs coach for the Las Vegas Raiders in 2022 and 2023.
The experience Ash has working with defensive backs plays to the strengths that Notre Dame’s defense took up during Golden’s tenure. The Irish led the nation in pass-efficiency defense in each of the last two seasons and set up to have a loaded secondary once again in 2025.
