Chris Ash hasn't spent the summer doing all that much recruiting. Instead, he's been "self scouting" and getting to know the players that will make up the Notre Dame football defense.
He's also been making subtle changes to the way the Fighting Irish take the field. Especially on the defensive line. Among those subtle changes is that the Golden Domers won't have a strong side and weak side defensive end. It will simply be the right and left ends. However, the changes are more than just what they call each end.
Ash’s left-right end shift aims to turbo-charge Notre Dame football front seven
"There are a lot of factors that play into that," the Notre Dame football team's defensive coordinator recently explained. "First of all, you look at the players. Is there a difference in their ability? Are you asking guys to do something different? When we really looked at last season and what we're looking to do, no, there's not. There are a lot of similar abilities there."
"Then you look at how you can get lined up quickly against teams that go really fast. Going left and right is the easiest thing to do. They don't have to worry about where's the field, where's the boundary, where's the open side, the closed side, so that's another part of it."
"You look at the match-ups," Ash continued. "Is there a reason to put a particular player to this side or that side or this position to exploit a possible mismatch? We looked at all of those things as we were trying to make a decision."
This new approach could show up when Ash puts his defense together in Week 1. The Miami Hurricanes have one of the best right tackles in the game in Francis Mauigoa. Notre Dame won't be locked into what kind of defensive end lines up against him now, instead going with who Ash thinks will match up best.
Ash has made comments before about his Notre Dame football defense being more about little tweaks to what Al Golden did rather than sweeping changes. How the defensive line positions its defensive linemen is just one of those tweaks.