Notre Dame interviews Gerad Parker for offensive coordinator position
Notre Dame is in exhaust-all-options mode in the search for an offensive coordinator. The Fighting Irish interviewed an in-house candidate for the job on Tuesday.
ESPN’s Heather Dinich tweeted that current Notre Dame tight ends coach Gerad Parker interviewed for the position on Tuesday, and “it went well” according to her sources. BlueandGold.com confirmed the news of Parker’s interview.
“The process is ongoing, but he put himself in a strong position with his interview,” Dinich said in her tweet.
Notre Dame brought Kansas State’s Collin Klein and Utah’s Andy Ludwig to campus last week. Klein chose to stay with the Wildcats, who are reigning Big 12 champions. Klein, 33, is an alum who played his way into being a Heisman Trophy finalist in 2012. Ludwig, 58, has been at Utah since 2019. He has 25 years of collegiate offensive coordinator experience.
All signs pointed to Ludwig taking the job when he publicly appeared alongside Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman at an Irish hockey game last Friday. However, ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Monday that the Irish ran into trouble with Ludwig’s $2.8 million buyout. Ludwig will remain at Utah because Notre Dame reportedly elected not to seal the deal.
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The search has pivoted to an internal candidate as a result.
Parker, 42, is entering his second season with the program. He was the offensive coordinator at West Virginia from 2020-21 before arriving at Notre Dame. He was a wide receiver at Kentucky from 2000-04 and has spent his coaching career at nine different stops, including Notre Dame, since getting into the profession as a wide receivers and defensive backs coach at Raceland-Worthington High school in Kentucky in 2005.
Parker was the interim coach at Purdue in 2016. The Boilermakers went 0-6 while he held that title. West Virginia ranked 85th and 92nd in yards per play when Parker was the OC there. The Mountaineers’ record was 12-11 in those two seasons.
Parker is a bit of an unknown commodity as an offensive coordinator, and he clearly wasn’t the obvious No. 1 choice for Freeman after Tommy Rees fled to Alabama considering the Irish entertained two other choices on campus in the last week. But if there is a top option internally, it’s Parker, and now he’s getting his look.
