Reports: Notre Dame to promote TE coach Gerad Parker to offensive coordinator

For the second consecutive time, Notre Dame’s new offensive coordinator will come from an internal promotion. Irish head coach Marcus Freeman will promote tight ends coach Gerad Parker to offensive coordinator, per multiple Wednesday reports.

FootballScoop.com first reported Notre Dame’s plans of turning its offense over to Parker to replace former Irish offensive coordinator Tommy Rees after he departed for the same role at Alabama earlier this month.

Parker joined Freeman’s staff last winter as the tight end coach, coming from two years spent as the co-offensive coordinator at West Virignia, working there with Graham Harrell. Given Freeman reportedly hired former Cincinnati offensive coordinator Gino Guidugli as Notre Dame’s quarterbacks coach on Wednesday, another offense-leading partnership may be in the makings for Parker.

In particular as it pertains to Guidugli, the University may take some time to officially announce him joining the staff, a frequent occurrence in South Bend for the last 21 years.

The two coaching decisions leave only an offensive line vacancy on Freeman’s staff.

In both Guidugli’s and Parker’s cases, Freeman’s time with them traces back far before he took over as Notre Dame’s head coach. Guidugli was an offensive coach at Cincinnati during Freeman’s four years on Luke Fickell’s Bearcats staff, and Freeman and Parker coached together at Purdue from 2013 to 2016.

Those tenures ended when the Boilermakers fired head coach Darrell Hazell. Parker served as Purdue’s interim head coach for the final six games of the season. Prior to that, he was the Boilermakers’ receivers coach for two seasons following two as the tight ends coach.

Freeman has mentioned in the past that the two spent