Ex-Notre Dame football player takes next step in coaching career

It’s been a rather wild couple of weeks when it comes to Notre Dame coaching moves. There was the hiring of Mike Denbrock as the new offensive coordinator and the addition of Loren Landow as the team’s new strength and conditioning coach. There as of course also the moving on of former offensive coordinator Gerad Parker.

It turns out there were even some Notre Dame football coaching moves made that didn’t really concern Irish coaches. What do I mean? There’s one former Golden Domer player who has really just started his coaching career and it appears he’s a bit of a rising star.

Tyler Stockton in his Notre Dame football playing days was a defensive lineman in the same class as none other than Manti Teo. Stockton’s career as a player wasn’t anywhere near as high profile as Teo’s. In fact, he recorded just four tackles and a sack in South Bend.

However, since he took off the pads for the final time and instead went into coaching, it certainly seems as though he’s found his niche. That includes the recent announcement that he was named Boise State’s co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach. He’ll be sharing the coordinator duties with former Nebraska Cornhuskers DC Erik Chinander.

Ex-Notre Dame football player takes big step in coaching career

Stockton’s quite young relative to other coaches who have defensive coordinator in their titles, even if they’re sharing duties. That despite the fact it took him no time at all to realize coaching is what he wanted to do.

After his final season with the Notre Dame football team, he took a job as a GA with Connecticut. From there he got his first full time coaching position with Western Illinois first leading the defensive line in 2016 and then co-DC and OLBs. 

In 2019, he was hired on by Ball State as the DC/ILBs coach and was promoted to Associate Head Coach/DC/ILB coach in 2021 and remained there until just now.

Now the former Notre Dame football player is a defensive coordinator on one of the most stories G5 programs in the country. From here, the future look very bright indeed.