SerpApi.Org
Mike Denbrock has lost track of how many times the narrative got hijacked, crammed into a frame that never fit and left to ferment as an outlier in his coaching career rather than the turning point it turned out to be.
The truth first, then why it matters.
Denbrock, Notre Dame’s current offensive coordinator and heading into his third year of his third tour of duty at the school, was never fired at the end of his second tour — seven seasons into the Brian Kelly era.
Following a 4-8 cratering in 2016, Kelly pushed an extreme philosophical makeover on himself and pushed a large portion of his coaching staff out the door. Denbrock wasn’t included in that purge, but the deal that Kelly pitched to the man whom he shared a living space and ramen noodles with at the start of their respective coaching careers, when money was tight, did take away play-calling duties that Denbrock held in the 2015 and ’16 seasons.
That would go to incoming offensive coordinator Chip Long, a man Kelly actually did fire three seasons later. Denbrock would have kept his title of associate head coach/wide receivers coach had he stayed for the 2017 season, as well as the financial compensation that came with that.
He still could have been a respected voice in the meeting room, just not one of the defining and deciding ones.
Instead, Denbrock bet on himself and headed to the University of Cincinnati.
The Lasting Return On Investment
The payoff was seeing who he could be without Kelly’s micromanaging — some might say smothering — at a UC program that was tasked with a tough rebuild after Tommy Tuberville (yep, the current Alabama senator) let it rot over time.
What that looks like a decade later is the 62-year-old Denbrock sitting at or near the top of his profession — as far as offensive coordinators go — at a school he loves and seemingly doesn’t want to ever leave again. And Denbrock positioning himself and the Irish to step into the dream with Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame that he was convinced was possible when uncoupling from Kelly at LSU after the 2023 season.
“Earlier in my career, I had opportunities in different offenses that I’ve been a part of to kind of see the way I’d run one if I ever really got my opportunity to do it,” Denbrock told Blue & Gold. “And there was only so much of that I was able to get done when I was here with coach Kelly, because it was really Brian’s offense that I was administering.
“Going to Cincinnati allowed me an opportunity to kind of just do it my way, if you will, and fail and succeed, and learn and adjust and grow. And try to put myself in a position where I had a ‘Mike Denbrock system’ of offense that was transferable to the next opportunity that came my way — if another opportunity did come my way. And that was kind of the start of it, that opportunity to go to Cincinnati and be able to do that.”
Along the way, Denbrock’s gamble and resulting evolution produced an offense good enough in 2021 to not only beat a Brian Kelly-coached Irish team in Notre Dame Stadium, but help a Group of Five UC team at the time make the four-team College Football Playoff.
Two years after that, Denbrock presided over an offense good enough to lead the nation in total yards and points per game — under a hands-off version of Kelly at LSU — and produce a Heisman Trophy winner in quarterback Jayden Daniels.
In 2026, the goal, and perhaps reasonable expectation, is for Denbrock to concoct and drive an offense good enough to complement Notre Dame’s elite defense and get the Irish to the national championship game for the second time in three years.
Maybe even win it this time.
That after the Irish finished 2025 with the nation’s No. 2 scoring offense (42.0 points per game), and with a first-year starting quarterback — CJ Carr — at the joystick, with all of four previous college snaps on his résumé.
The Next Steps
“I mean, I think the devil is always in the details for me,” Denbrock said of how Year 3 might take off, while it’s still sitting on the runway at the moment. “And going into Year 3, having had a group, with CJ in particular as the returning quarterback, and having a good amount of guys who have played in the system, it gives us an opportunity to not just kind of spend time on scheme, teaching plays.
“It gives us an opportunity to really kind of dig into the details of everything that we do, why we do it. And it promotes a deeper understanding that I think leads to better production, especially during certain situations in the game.
“So, whether that’s third down, whether that’s short yardage, the more understanding they have of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, the better opportunity we’ve got to adjust when we need to adjust and execute at a much higher level.”
That could be scary in a good way, considering Carr set the single-season school record for pass efficiency in 2025 (168.1) and became the first Irish quarterback since Jimmy Clausen in 2009 to finish in the top five nationally in that key statistical metric.
Meanwhile, until Carr this year, Notre Dame hasn’t had an incumbent starting quarterback since Ian Book in 2020. But Denbrock has experienced it, both at UC and LSU. The most recent — Daniels — improved in pass efficiency from Year 1 in a Denbrock offense to Year 2 from 144.5 to an NCAA-record 208.0.
The year before Denbrock arrived at LSU, Daniels was in his final season at Arizona State (2021) and put up a 136.2 rating, which ranked 65th nationally.
“I think there’s a couple of advantages to having a returning starter at quarterback and one who you believe in,” Denbrock said. “No. 1 is that who’s going to lead your offensive unit and your football team is pretty set, and there’s a lot of very good things that come from that being the case.
“One is the continuity, obviously, that you’re able to establish. And the second is really about the quarterback, in particular, being able to gain more understanding and familiarity with situational football. You know when to take chances, when not to take chances, when to take the checkdown, when to push the ball down the field, when to, in a decision-making situation, make sure you’re putting the offense in as good a possible position as you can.
“I think all those things, along with many others, come from having a returning quarterback, because Year 1 is always almost like working out the bugs of what are you really good at? What can you feature? How much can they take in and then execute at a really high level?
“Once you have that a little bit more established as you work into Year 2, you’re able to expound on the things that you do really well and kind of grow those things as much as possible and stay away from some of the areas that maybe this certain quarterback isn’t comfortable with. It just helps the overall flow of what you’re trying to teach offensively.”
How The Vision Is Becoming Reality
The way Notre Dame has been able to recruit offensive talent from the high school ranks, add from the transfer portal and develop and retain its key players has Denbrock in position to finally have all the gears of the kind of offense he wants to run with the Irish.
He wants ground and pound. He also wants to roll out four-wide receiver sets to torture teams foolish enough to play man and also provide painful counterpunches for defenses that want to load the box. And then when the occasion calls for it, Denbrock can unleash a fleet of bullying tight ends that should help the Irish offense improve in the two areas where they labored the most in 2025 — short-yardage and red-zone production.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t questions to ask and answer in August in a number of areas, including a run game that no longer includes 2026 NFL first-rounders Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price.
Irish nation will get its first look at it all in a very full-circle moment for Denbrock and Irish fifth-year head coach Marcus Freeman Sept. 6 in the season opener at iconic Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis.
Standing on the opposing sideline will be Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell, who hired Denbrock in 2017 as his offensive coordinator and Freeman in 2017 as his defensive coordinator. Both have come light years since in their coaching — individually at first, and now together again at Notre Dame.
“I think the thing that I love about Marcus is we have a similar philosophy in that there’s never enough growth,” Denbrock said. “There’s never a time where you’re going to feel like you know it all. There’s never a time where you feel like you’ve got to have every single answer that there ever was.
“You need to rely on people around you and you need to rely on your own personal development to continue to evolve. And from the time we were together at Cincinnati to the time when I came back to Notre Dame, the growth that I saw in him from some of the experiences that he lived through and some of the things that he had learned from being a head coach, the difference in the person and the leader that he was then to now was easy to see. And it was impressive.
“I could tell there had been a tremendous amount of study, a tremendous amount of digging into what goes into being a great leader of men and consistently being able to produce at a high level. And even to this day, that continues to grow.”
Walking away from Notre Dame might have been the second-best decision Denbrock made in his life. Coming home again feels like the best.
“Being here with Marcus is where I want to be and need to be,” Denbrock said. “How he looks at the game and approaches it, I think that it’s just an example to everybody that there’s more and better answers, and everything should be questioned.
“And maybe the way you’re doing it is the best way, but maybe there’s a little bit of tweak here or tweak there that can make it even better than it is. He’s a great example of that. And I think that’s the characteristic of him that is really remarkable.”
