OC Chip Long Has The Notre Dame Offense Close To Where It Needs To Be

Get a FREE 60-day trial and four FREE copies of the BGI digital magazine using promo code Irish60

Notre Dame offensive coordinator Chip Long has proven that he will adapt to his personnel, and he’s done a masterful job of milking as much as he could from that unit the last two seasons, and he’s done it in dramatically different forms.

But Long will coach an offense in 2019 that has three classes that have only been coached by him, and it will have three classes that Long played some role in putting together.

That means Notre Dame is getting much closer to being the kind of offense Long ultimately wants to have.

So what does the ideal Chip Long offense look like? The answer can be found with some of the adjustments we saw in 2018 and with how he has recruited since his arrival.

1) Tempo: Long has not run an offense that is overly fast paced offense since he arrived, at least not to the level he likes. But once Ian Book was inserted into the quarterback position last fall we saw that tempo get pushed a bit more.

There is another level that I believe Long wants to get to, but he was forced to use far more versatile personnel the last two seasons due to deficiencies in some areas, and that required him to slow things down more than he would likely prefer. Being explosive and efficient is also key, and the offense was explosive in 2017 but not efficient, and it was efficient last season but not explosive.

The 2019 offense has a chance - at least on paper - to be the best combination of those two things that we've seen since Long arrived, and it gives him a chance to really push the tempo next season.

2) Versatile Run Game: We saw this in 2017 much more than we did this past season. Long had two high caliber guards that season (Quenton Nelson, Alex Bars) and a first round pick at tackle (Mike McGlinchey). There was a higher level of athleticism that season as well, which allowed Long to be far more diverse with his run game.