When the Notre Dame football team hired Chris Ash as the defensive coordinator to replace Al Golden, I was more than a little underwhelmed by the hire. Ash is a guy who is well respected enough, but his defenses have never been the kind of lockdown, lights-out attack that Irish fans have grown accustomed to over the last few years.
Then came the spring and the fall and Ash said all the right things. He talked about not changing much from what Golden had installed. He talked about how much he liked what he saw from his defense.