Possible Offensive Coordinator Candidates To Replace Long At Notre Dame

With Chip Long out as offensive coordinator, the chatter has already moved on to who will replace him.

Conventional wisdom may indicate the next offensive coordinator will be promoted from within the Fighting Irish program, but head coach Brian Kelly doesn't have to rush into a decision.

Sign up for BlueandGold.com today and get a FREE $75 Nike gift card

That's why it's still worth speculating on who it will be and even wondering about the possibility of outside hires.

The favorites to fill the offensive coordinator vacancy are already on the Fighting Irish football staff, namely a young yet promising quarterbacks coach, who understands what it's like to be the face of the Notre Dame offense.

• Tommy Rees — The current Notre Dame quarterbacks coach appears to be in line for a big promotion, all before he turns 28 years old.

Irish fans are of course very familiar with Rees, who was a Notre Dame signal-caller and the off-and-on starter throughout his time on campus from 2010 to 2013.

After going undrafted in 2014, Rees had a very brief stint with the Washington Redskins before becoming a graduate assistant at Northwestern in 2015. A year later, he took a job as an offensive assistant with the San Diego Chargers and then found his way back to Notre Dame in 2017, where he's been the quarterbacks coach ever since.

He's never had play-calling responsibilities, so doing that for the first time at a national program like Notre Dame may seem drastic, but Kelly and the other coaches on staff seem to have a lot of faith in Rees.

• Lance Taylor — He may still be in his first year as Notre Dame running backs coach, but Taylor was viewed as a great hire when he arrived in South Bend in January of 2019 and someone with aspirations of becoming an offensive coordinator.

It seems unlikely that Taylor would move from Notre Dame running backs coach to the team's offensive coordinator one season, but could he be the team's run-game coordinator or some other advanced title? That feels more plausible.

Taylor has worked for a number of well-regarded programs, including Alabama where he played and got his coaching start as a graduate assistant in 2007. Two years later, he was the wide receivers coach at the FCS program Appalachian State.

He followed that up with three years with the New York Jets, two stints with the Carolina Panthers and three years with Stanford, where he coached Heisman Finalists Christian McCaffrey and Bryce Love.