A look at the history of Notre Dame football’s DCs under Brian Kelly
By Brad Weiss
Notre Dame football DCs: Mike Elko (2017)
In 2017, Mike Elko took the reigns of the Notre Dame defense, and his one year at the helm helped pave the way for the success under Clark Lea. Playing an extremely tough regular-season schedule, Elko led the Irish to a 10-3 record, and a win in the Citrus Bowl, before leaving the program to join Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M.
Elko saw a big improvement from his defense in his one year in South Bend, as he took over an absolute mess from the VanGorder years. His defense held a No. 11-ranked USC team and No. 14 ranked NC State team to 14 points, and locked a tough LSU offense to under 20 points in a solid New Years Six bowl game victory to close out his career with the Irish.
In total, the Irish held their opponents to 20 or fewer points in ten of their 13 games that season.
There were some rumblings that Elko could return to South Bend after Lea left, but that was all noise. He was a strong recruiter during his time with the Irish, bringing in linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, who would go on to become an All-American and likely first-round draft pick in 2021.