SOUTH BEND, Ind. — In a run-of-the-mill, in-season Monday press conference midway through Notre Dame’s 2023 football season, Marcus Freeman was pitched a big-picture question he could have easily filibustered and gotten away with it.
Instead, the Irish head coach delivered an impassioned and effusive answer about ND defensive backs coach Mike Mickens and his football future.
“I absolutely think Mike Mickens is ready to be a defensive coordinator,” Freeman said at the time and then went on to explain the many reasons why.
Freeman expressed the same sentiments again this past week, to a group of Irish football beat reporters over brunch, when it was pointed out that a vacancy on Freeman’s staff for that very position opened up a little over four months ago, in late January. And without the 37-year-old Mickens moving on up.
At least not in title.
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Freeman instead plucked former Ohio State defensive coordinator Chris Ash out of the NFL to be Al Golden’s successor. Golden left ND after three seasons to be the DC for the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals.
“For me, when I make decisions, it’s more about what does this program need at that moment?,” Freeman said. “And I believe at that moment, we needed Chris Ash, because of the traits that he brings to this program — the traits that we lost versus the traits that we wanted to bring in. That’s what went into that decision.
“So, Mick is going to have a huge role. But that’s based off the confidence that he’s been able to gain out of Chris Ash.”
In other words, what MIckens earned during the on-ramp to spring practice, the actual 14 spring sessions and the run-up to Notre Dame’s summer session, which kicks off Monday for the returnees and June 9 for the 12 freshmen who didn’t enroll early.
The 51-year-old Ash does bring power conference experience as a defensive coordinator, former college head coaching experience and a recent run in the NFL — all parallels to Golden’s résumé before he became the first defensive coordinator of the Marcus Freeman head coaching era in February of 2022 and stayed for three seasons.
Meanwhile, what Mickens still brings to counterbalance his inexperience in some areas, is elite-level recruiting, elite-level evaluation and elite-level development to the cornerbacks position group for the past five seasons — and bottom-line results to match. That’s even as he’s added safeties and defensive passing game coordinator responsibilities to his plate in the past couple of seasons.
Two seasons in which Notre Dame led the nation in pass-efficiency defense and the only two the Irish have done so since it became the NCAA’s standard of measuring pass defensive effectiveness in 1990.
He showed that same kind of promise at Cincinnati during the two seasons of overlap of Mickens coaching the Bearcats’ corners and Freeman serving as defensive coordinator (2018-19). In both seasons, Cincinnati was top 15 in the FBS in pass-efficiency defense and top 25 both seasons in scoring D.
Former Irish head coach Brian Kelly then poached Mickens after the 2019 season to coach corners at ND beginning in 2020, and Freeman a year later to be his defensive coordinator before Kelly bolted to LSU in late November of 2021.
“When we were in high school, we never talked about or dreamed about ending up in coaching,” Freeman said in a one-on-one interview just ahead of Mickens’ first season with ND while the former was still at UC. “But it feels like this is what we were meant to do. It’s been fun to watch his career rise to where it’s at now. I’m not surprised one bit.
“He’s a guy who can make you laugh, a guy you can trust, and he’s one of those guys who are energy providers. He’s a guy that no matter how my day is, he’s going to be a positive guy and provide energy for all of us.”
Jay Minton can feel that energy from a distance as the two are collaborating once again, just as they did as high school football teammates two decades ago at Wayne High School in Huber Heights, Ohio.
Freeman, a year ahead in school and a linebacker, was a Parade All-American and the No. 31 player overall nationally in the 2004 recruiting class, per Rivals.com. MIckens, despite elite track speed — he was the Ohio state champ in the 300-meter hurdles — was kind of a spindly afterthought and signed as a two-star prospect with Cincinnati.
And turned into an All-American there.
A heart condition for Freeman and a knee injury for Mickens mitigated their NFL dreams, which they both eventually redirected into a passion and penchant for coaching.
“Mike, you knew that he was going to do something great, because he was such a great competitor,” Minton told Inside ND Sports. “With Mike, it didn’t matter if he was practicing or playing or whatever, whatever he was doing.
“That sets the tone for his personal standard and sets the tone for his players. The other thing would be his relationship with his players. Those two things are the key things for Mick. The neat thing is he’s gotten all this notoriety and I’m sure he’s going to do great things, eventually as a coordinator and then a head coach down the road somewhere.
“He’s going to do that. There’s no doubt about it, because that’s just the way he is. That’s what he’s able to bring out in people who he works with and those lives that he touches.”
Individually at Notre Dame, Mickens coached the only safety in school history — Xavier Watts — to earn unanimous All-America honors (2023. And Watts — a one-time three-star wide receiver prospect — followed his historic season with consensus honors at safety under Mickens in 2024.
At cornerback, Mickens has both recruited and developed two of Notre Dame’s 11 FWAA Freshman All-Americans since that organization started putting out Freshman All-America teams in 2001 — Benjamin Morrison (2022) and Leonard Moore (2024).
And he had one of those at Cincinnati as well, in Sauce Gardner (2019). Moore, incidentally, was named FWAA Freshman Defensive Player of the Year this past season.
He and rising junior Christian Gray are returning starters at corner for the 2024 national runners-up, but all three freshman cornerbacks on the 2025 roster are expected to compete for key depth roles this season — Cree Thomas, who gave off Morrison vibes in the spring and comes from the same high school program (Brophy Prep in Phoenix), and June enrollees Mark Zackery IV and Dallas Golden.
Zackery is the reigning Mr. Football in Indiana. Golden, at No. 69 in the final 2025 Rivals individual rankings, is the highest-rated cornerback prospect to sign with the Irish since Darrin Walls in 2006 — the cycle immediately following Mickens’ senior season with Wayne.
“I remember sitting them in a car with [then-UV head coach] Mark Dantonio and [UC assistant] Harlon Barnett,” Minton said of Mickens’ own recruiting process, “and Mark Dantonio said, ‘Jay will this kid make it? Can this kid make it?’
“I said, ‘A thousand percent. No doubt in MIke Mickens.’ Whether you coached him or been around him, you have no doubt. I think that’s why those guys coming to Notre Dame, when they’re in his room and he’s coaching them up and preparing them and out at practice, they just have no doubt that they’re going to be successful.
“And I’m really proud of what Marcus has done, too. He’s done all the right things, made all the right moves. And I don’t think they’re done. If he can keep guys like Mick — getting the right people around him, I think that’s the key. You’ve got to have the right kind of people around you to be successful.”
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