Welcome, everybody, to Irish Illustrated's first edition of Irish Illustrated ISO.

I'm Tim Priester of Irish Illustrated.

And we're going to give this a shot.

Tim O'Malley and I will be doing these periodically.

We're adding this to our podcast menu where we are going solo.

And I'm starting out today.

And the topic is not only Chris Ash,

Nordames, what we expect to be the Nordames next defensive coordinator, but just the evolution

of the Nordame defensive coordinator position and defense in general since the firing of

Brian Van Gorder during the 2016 season.

And since then, it's really been a, it's been an eight-year defensive

renaissance of Notre Dame football on the defensive side of the ball.

The high water mark coming in 2012 prior to that with Bob Diaco when Nordame's defense.

Nording played for the national title, of course, against Alabama.

And Nordames defense finished number two in the nation at 12.77 points per game under Bob Diaco.

They were also seventh in total defense and 11th in rushing defense.

And after he left the following year to start his head coaching career,

in came Brian Van Gorder.

And as we all know, that did not go very well.

They immediately slipped to number 82 in the country in scoring defense in 2014.

And then after a bad start in 2016, particularly at Texas,

where I called for his firing, I've never done anything like that in print before,

...