Report: Notre Dame expected to promote Gerad Parker to offensive coordinator

After a long and winding road through the interview process, Notre Dame appears to have its next offensive coordinator in its sights. The Fighting Irish are expected to promote tight ends coach Gerad Parker to the role, ESPN’s Heather Dinich reported Wednesday.

Last year was Parker’s first as tight ends coach following two years as the offensive coordinator at West Virginia. Under his watch in 2021, the Mountaineers ranked ninth out of 10 teams in the Big 12 in scoring offense with 25.2 points per game and eighth in total offense, averaging 371.5 yards per game.

Dinich reported Parker interviewed for the role on Tuesday. Earlier Wednesday on The Paul Finebaum Show, she said Parker had a strong interview with Notre Dame.

“My sources have told me an internal candidate — their tight ends coach, Gerad Parker — just crushed an interview, a formal interview, on Tuesday,” Dinich said. “He’s put himself in a very strong position, but the interview process is ongoing.”

The decision to promote Parker comes the same day Notre Dame hired Wisconsin assistant Gino Guidugli to be the new quarterbacks coach.

More background on Gerad Parker

Parker played wide receiver at Kentucky from 2000-04 and had 168 receiving yards to his name in 2004. He started coaching at the high school level after graduation before returning to Lexington as a graduate assistant in 2007. He then worked as the passing game coordinator and recruiting coordinator at UT-Martin from 2008-10.

After a stint as the wide receivers coach at Marshall from 2011-12, Parker latched on at Purdue from 2013-16, where he worked as recruiting coordinator, wide receivers coach and tight ends coach before he went 0-6 as the interim head coach in 2016. It was in West Lafayette where Parker met Marcus Freeman, who was the linebackers coach and eventually defensive coordinator.

Parker nearly followed Freeman to Cincinnati in 2017, but opted to take the East Carolina wide receivers coach job. However, a DUI arrest led the Pirates to rescind the offer, leading him to become a football operations assistant at Duke that season. He later moved up to wide receivers coach in 2018 and left to become the wide receivers coach at Penn State in 2019.