Get to Know New Notre Dame DC Greg Hudson

Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly made some waves on Sunday by abruptly firing Brian Vangorder as Notre Dame defensive coordinator less than 24 hours after staunchly defending him.  Kelly tapped former Notre Dame linebacker Greg Hudson to fill in as the interim defensive coordinator.  Here’s a rundown of the man tasked with trying to put out the fires surrounding the smoldering Notre Dame defense.

Greg Hudson was a reserve linebacker for Notre Dame in the late 80’s originally recruited as part of the last recruiting class of Gerry Faust.  Hudson played on special teams and as a reserve linebacker for Lou Holtz once Holtz took over the reigns of the Notre Dame program before eventually playing baseball for the Irish after essentially getting recruited over by Holtz.

Hudson returned to Notre Dame in 1993 as a graduate assistant for Holtz after coaching linebackers at the University of Redlands.  Hudson’s Notre Dame ties didn’t end there though.  From 1994-1996 he joined Skip Holtz’s staff at UConn as an offensive line coach.  In 1997 he joined former Notre Dame DC Rick Minter at Cincinnati in various roles (OL, RB, LB).

In 2001 Hudson moved to Minnesota under Glen Mason as recruiting coordinator and linebackers coach before getting his first defensive coordinator position in 2002 with the Golden Gophers.  In 2005 Hudson was reunited with Skip Holtz at East Carolina serving as Holtz’s defensive coordinator.

Hudson’s first real big break came in 2010 when Jimbo Fisher tapped him to join his first staff at Florida State as assistant head coach and linebackers coach.  After three seasons under Fisher, Hudson got another chance at being a defensive coordinator under Darrell Hazel at Purdue.

For the last three years Hudson was the Boilermakers defensive coordinator before being fired this off-season following a 2-10 campaign.  During his three year tenure at Purdue, Hudson didn’t exactly oversee strong defenses or show much improvement.  Here is how Purdue’s defensive ranked over the last three season.

Year	Total Defense	Passing Defense	Rush Defense
2013	95	33	116
2014	83	56	96
2015	111	88	107

This off-season Hudson flew under the radar in joining Notre Dame’s staff as a defensive analyst.  Former Notre Dame standout Jeff Burris drew more headlines when he joined the staff in the same role despite less experience.

For those unfamiliar with the “analyst” position, it’s essentially a way for programs to have a few bench coaches that don’t count as official members of the coaching staff.  At the same time, there are restrictions which are placed on what they can and can’t do in their roles.  For the most part, their roles consist of a lot of film work so if Hudson has been dissecting Notre Dame’s defensive game film from the last few seasons and first four games of the year, he is well aware of all of the breakdowns and problems he is now tasked with fixing.

As an analyst though, Hudson will need to build relationships quick with his defensive personnel.  “He doesn’t have a ton of interaction with them (the players) because he’s an analyst,” Kelly told the media on Sunday.   “He does a lot more obviously in the film room. He does a lot more of the work that’s off the field.”

Hudson won’t be a completely unknown to the players though.  “They clearly know who he is. He’s respected by the players. But this will be a new relationship that he’ll be building with the defensive players,” Kelly added.  “He’s been around. He’s been with us through camp and certainly they know that he brings a lot of experience to the position. But this will be new relationships building.”

Aside from his critical tasks of teaching the defense how to tackle and trying to generate some sort of pass rush, Brian Kelly also said that Hudson will be charged with getting the defense to play with more passion.

“As the defensive coordinator, he’ll assume the responsibilities of the coordinator to get some energy into the group, some passion, and get that unit playing the kind of football that I know they are capable of,” Kelly said on Sunday.

Kelly called on Hudson over current staff members because he felt Hudson was best suited to restore the energy level of the defense.  “I thought Greg was the perfect fit to bring that energy level up to where I want to see it,” Kelly said.  Guys played hard, but we lacked some of the energy and enthusiasm and fun, quite frankly, that you need to have when you’re playing on defense.

Given Hudson’s background as a linebackers coach – the same position group Vangorder was responsible for – that likely played a role in Kelly’s decision making.  It’s also likely Kelly just wanted a fresh voice directing the Notre Dame defense after having the same staff in place the last two seasons.  Sometimes a fresh voice and new ideas can go a long way.

For now, Hudson is still the interim defensive coordinator but he has a chance to earn the distinction of removing the “interim” label depending on how he does over the final eight or nine games depending on if the Irish make a bowl game at this rate.

“Everybody’s interviewing. Everybody on our staff for the rest of the staff is on a very public interview. So everybody’s got a chance to continue in their roles, and we’ll all have that very public interview as we play each and every week,” Kelly said.

Hudson’s first job will be to figure out a way for the beleaguered Notre Dame defense to slow down an uptempo Syracuse offense currently ranked 25th in the NCAA.  For those that may have forgotten, uptempo offenses were Achilles heel of Vangorder’s defense with North Carolina exposing BVG in 2014 and every uptempo offense since doing essentially whatever they wanted on the Irish since.  That includes the same Texas team that put up 50 points on Notre Dame less than a month ago with a true freshman quarterback.

No pressure, Greg.  No pressure at all.