The news is officially official. On Thursday, the Cincinnati Bengals announced Notre Dame football assistant Al Golden as their new defensive coordinator.<\/p>\n
\u201cAl is a very highly regarded coach, and we are excited to welcome him back to the Bengals as defensive coordinator,\u201d Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said in a statement<\/strong><\/a>. \u201cHe understands football at every level and has had great success as a coordinator, position coach and head coach. Al has a great football mind and will bring a smart, physical, aggressive approach to our defense.\u201d<\/p>\n The 55-year Golden, a Colts Neck, N.J., native, just completed his third season with the Fighting Irish. He will rejoin head coach Taylor\u2019s staff in Cincinnati, where he served as the linebackers coach from 2020-21. The Bengals reached the Super Bowl during the 2021 season. He joined the Irish in 2022, coach Marcus Freeman\u2019s<\/a><\/strong> first as head coach.<\/p>\n RELATED: Who could replace Al Golden as Notre Dame defensive coordinator?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Golden directed the Notre Dame defense to three remarkable seasons. Under his tutelage, they were top-25 in total defense every year. The Irish were also in the top 10 in scoring defense in the last two seasons. Last month, the Broyles Award \u2014 presented annually to college football\u2019s top assistant coach \u2014named Golden one of five finalists. <\/p>\n When Golden took over the Irish in 2022, it was the first time he had been a defensive coordinator since his days at Virginia from 2001-05. He became Temple\u2019s head coach from 2006-10 and Miami from 2011-15. Before his time with the Bengals, Golden was the Detroit Lions tight ends coach from 2016-17 and the linebackers coach from 2018-19.<\/p>\n He also coaches linebackers at Boston College (1997-99) and Penn State (2000), where he graduated in 1991. He started coaching at Red Bank (N.J.) Red Bank Catholic<\/a><\/strong> as an offensive coordinator in 1993. After that season, he had his first stint in Virginia as a graduate student from 1994-96.<\/p>\n With Golden off to Cincinnati, Freeman will have to appoint a new coordinator to his staff for the fifth time. Four of those hires involved coaches who had previous ties to Freeman. <\/p>\n After the 2022 season, he had to fill vacancies left by offensive coordinator\u00a0Tommy Rees<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and special teams coordinator\u00a0Brian Mason<\/a><\/strong>. Freeman promoted tight ends coach\u00a0Gerad Parker<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to offensive coordinator and tapped Ole Miss special teams coordinator\u00a0Marty Biagi<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to lead Notre Dame\u2019s unit. Biagi was a special teams analyst with the Irish in 2016. Mason replaced former Irish special teams coordinator Brian Polian<\/a><\/strong>, who followed Brian Kelly<\/a><\/strong> to LSU after 2021. <\/p>\n When Parker \u2014 who coached with Freeman at Purdue from 2013-16 \u2014 left Notre Dame after the 2023 season to become the head coach at Troy, Freeman snagged LSU offensive coordinator\u00a0Mike Denbrock<\/a><\/strong>. Freeman worked with Denbrock at the University of Cincinnati from 2017-20. Mason was also on the Bearcats\u2019 staff. <\/p>\n Golden\u2019s departure marks the program\u2019s fifth defensive coordinator search since 2017.<\/p>\n The post Bengals announce Notre Dame football\u2019s Al Golden as defensive coordinator<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The news is officially official. On Thursday, the Cincinnati Bengals announced Notre Dame football assistant…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Who will Notre Dame hire as defensive coordinator? <\/h2>\n