Cincinnati offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock’s and Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly’s careers first crossed paths in 1987 as graduate assistants at Division II Grand Valley State, two coaching hopefuls working endless hours for little monetary reward.
Their introduction via shared grind turned into 15 years on staffs together and a close friendship. Denbrock was Kelly’s offensive coordinator (1992-95) and defensive coordinator (1996-98) at Grand Valley State. He was on Kelly’s Notre Dame staff in various offensive assistant roles from 2010-16, including a season as the offensive coordinator in 2014. He was even in Kelly’s wedding party.
Denbrock departed Notre Dame after the 2016 season to take his current job. Nearly five years later, he will his return to Notre Dame Stadium when the No. 7 Bearcats (3-0) play the No. 9 Irish (4-0) on Saturday (2:30 p.m., NBC). Which means he and Kelly will coach against each other for the first time in their careers.
“I have a ton of respect for Mike,” Kelly said Monday. “We’re great friends.”
The top-10 matchup has plenty of ties that bind. Kelly, defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman and cornerbacks coach Mike Mickens left the same jobs at Cincinnati to come to Notre Dame. Mickens is a former Cincinnati player under Kelly. Bearcats wide receiver Michael Young Jr. played for Notre Dame from 2017-19, catching 17 passes.
Then there’s Denbrock, who brings a top-10 scoring offense into the game against his longtime friend at his former workplace.
“I think he has done an incredible job at Cincinnati and maintained a high level of offense,” Kelly said. “If you look at where they are, Mike has been part of that ascent. They’ve played really good defense and Marcus Freeman has been lauded for that, but Mike has done an incredible job on the offensive side of the ball maintaining that over a long period of time.”
Cincinnati is averaging 43.0 points per game and hung 38 points in a win Sept. 18 at Indiana. The Bearcats are 29th in yards per play, at 6.78. They have scored touchdowns on 12 of their 13 red-zone trips (85.7 percent), tied for the fourth-best rate nationally.
Fifth-year senior quarterback Desmond Ridder is in his fourth year as a starter and enters the game with a 65.1 percent completion rate, 748 passing yards, seven touchdowns and two interceptions. He’s averaging 9.0 yards per pass.
Under Denbrock’s direction last year, Cincinnati was 16th in yards per play and averaged 37.5 points per game. It finished in the top 25 in scoring in 2018 and 2020.
The defense, meanwhile, has not dropped off under Freeman’s replacement, Mike Tressel. The Bearcats have allowed just six plays of 20 or more yards, the fewest of any team in the country. No team allows a lower completion rate. Only Georgia has held opposing quarterbacks to a worse passing efficiency.
Kelly, director of athletics Jack Swarbrick and director of football operations Ron Powlus scheduled the game against Cincinnati in April 2019, when the Bearcats were coming off an 11-2 season in head coach Luke Fickell’s second year in charge. They surely understood it would be no rollover, even if Notre Dame is paying Cincinnati $1.2 million to play the game. It’s unlikely, though, anyone in South Bend imagined it would pose this kind of test.
“They’re deserving of where they’re ranked,” Kelly said. “This is clearly, from our perspective, the best team we’ve played up to this point.”
One of his best friends is a major reason why. And he’s out for bragging rights.
“He wants to beat us, and I want to beat him,” Kelly said. “He wouldn’t want it any other way.”
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