Ian Book Is All In On Tommy Rees’ Promotion: ‘He’s Ready For It’
Ask Ian Book about Tommy Rees’ promotion to Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator in January, and staunch support for the decision becomes clear in a matter of moments.
Rees, 27, landed one of the highest-profile assistant coaching jobs in college football five years after beginning his coaching career as a Northwestern graduate assistant. He is the second-youngest coordinator in the country.
And he has a resounding endorsement from his most important player, whom he has coached and grown close with since coming to Notre Dame in 2017 for the first time as a coach.
“He’s ready for it,” Book said on NBC Sports’ “Distanced Training’ in late April. “Some people may be worried he’s so young. I’m not worried about it at all. We’ll see that when we start playing.”
Rees, of course, had one spring practice to work with Notre Dame’s 2020 team in an on-field setting before campus closed, players were sent home and college football shoehorned into a virtual existence.
Even though he called plays in the Fighting Irish’s Camping World Bowl win over Iowa State and was the team’s quarterbacks coach from 2017-19, Rees is beginning a major career step with significant handicaps. There are relationships to build with all position groups, offensive installs, and endless meetings — all with no practice.
But in Book’s view, Rees’ best traits have still shined.
“It’s the way he can relate to players,” Book said. “Learning from someone who’s done it seven or eight years ago, it makes the biggest difference for me. He’s been in the situation and been through the pressure I’ve been through as a Notre Dame quarterback. He’s an outlet.
“I’d go into his office every day to do a meeting about football and we’ll get to talking about life. I consider him a best friend, and at the same time, a coach. He knows how to switch from being a friend to coach and, ‘Alright, it’s meeting time.’ He’ll get on me and five seconds later we’re fine.”
For now, Book, Rees and the rest of the offense are installing the playbook over Zoom meetings. It’ll have to do, and so far, has still created productivity. Rees gives Book and backups Brendan Clark and Drew Pyne two quarterback quizzes per week, sent to each player’s iPad.
Can’t practice the offense? Better be sure to commit it to memory.
“He will basically have an ‘A, B or C’ question for about 10 questions,” Book said. “You just have to turn it in by the next meeting. We’re allowed to meet three times per week. We’ll meet, install and have a quiz on all that. It’s good. Just test your mind, just like you would on campus.”
What they’ll miss, though, is natural back-and-forth that comes from in-person practice settings and actual repetition of the plays.
Familiarity and bond aside, Rees is still a first-year coordinator with one game of play-calling experience, a different mind with varying ideas from former offensive coordinator Chip Long. Book and Long had a quarterback-play caller feel for each other that develops only with time. How fast Rees and Book reach that requisite synergy is a critical offseason plot line.
“Every quarterback is good at their own thing,” Book said. “It’s about having a system that can fit that QB well. Coach Rees is unbelievable about it. Every coordinator wants to run the offense their certain way. But at the same time, whoever’s playing quarterback for you, it’s about making adjustments around you.”
Together, their task is helping Book be the reason Notre Dame goes just a bit farther after an 11-2 season in 2019. Book, as a fifth-year senior quarterback, is too aware of the role he plays in taking Notre Dame from pretty good to great and a wire-to-wire playoff contender (or participant). It’s part of why he returned. Beneath the 34 touchdown passes, something still felt absent. He and Rees will need to be in lockstep from the start despite the tricky circumstances.
Even though Notre Dame’s top 2019 receiving targets — Chase Claypool and Cole Kmet — are now in the NFL, there are ingredients with which Book and Rees can work, notably the entire starting offensive line coming back. Book, in a few ways, can control the unit’s ceiling that he and Rees believe is higher despite coming off the highest-scoring season of Brian Kelly’s tenure.
“I believe in myself in that I can get better,” Book said. “Coach Rees is a good coordinator. The whole line is back. There are things I can improve on and I’ll be ready for.”
One of his citations was a frequent fan talking point, too. The 23-17 road loss to Georgia last September still rankles Book. Notre Dame wasn’t outclassed against one of college football’s most talented teams, but there were just enough non-execution moments and stretches of listlessness from the offense that held it more than half its season average.
Book said he has watched the game about nine times. In a break from habit, he even watched the TV broadcast. The sting is still there.
“I had a hard time watching it,” Book said. “We fed Cole the ball a ton in the first half and land it was working. We fed Chase a lot in the second half and it was working. I don’t know if it was a specific plan, but if I change a couple things and play a little better, we win that game.”
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