University of Notre Dame special teams coordinator Brian Mason has been named the 2022 FootballScoop Special Teams Coordinator of the Year, presented by AstroTurf and as voted by Mason’s peers and previous winners in the 15-year history of the honor.
Notre Dame, with wins in six of its final seven games, can point directly to the impact of Mason’s third-phase units for how and why the Fighting Irish are entering 2023 with tremendous momentum and optimism.
After seeing the program block just six total kicks of any type in the five previous seasons, Notre Dame exits Year 1 under Mason’s charge of special teams with seven blocked punts – including a record-smashing blitzkrieg of six blocks in a five-game span midseason.
“I think it’s one thing to be able to know all the details of a scheme but to then implement and teach it, that is another story,” first-year Irish head coach Marcus Freeman, with five wins against ranked foes in his first-ever season as a head coach, told FootballScoop. “He’s able to capture those guys, has great meetings, keeps them engaged.
“And, he has a little fun with them. There’s a real investment. The guys in those special teams meetings, with Mase, they feel the importance of getting the job done.”
As FootballScoop noted earlier this fall, Mason – a 2021 Special Teams Coordinator of the Year Finalist — weekly conducts video sessions with his players in which Notre Dame studies the excellent special teams work – of other teams around college football. The Zionsville, Indiana, native with previous stops at Kent State, Ohio State and Purdue is praised by Freeman for his work that resonates to the core of coaching – an ability to teach.
“It goes back to presentation and to how you present it in front of that room and gain, really, the trust of those guys to feel like, ‘Man, this is so important,’” Freeman said. “It’s not just another phase. They truly have a buy-in.”
Mason, who as his first season in South Bend, Indiana, unfolded saw more and more Irish players request special teams roles, borrowed from his head coach’s manifestations – a desire to “dominate all three phases” – to lend perspective to the Notre Dame special teams components.
“Nobody came to Notre Dame to play special teams,” Mason, whose Cincinnati and Notre Dame units own a combined 18 blocks since 2020, tells his players in unit meetings, “but we’re going to put our best players on special teams.”
They were front and center in the team’s come-from-behind, Gator Bowl win Friday against South Carolina; a fake-punt flip-pass from Davis Sherwood to Braden Lenzy helped the Irish continue the program’s second-largest postseason comeback, and every other special teams phase factored into the win.
“I think it was, 1, his work ethic, 2, he was really meticulous,” Freeman said of what resonated with him about Mason when they first converged more than a decade ago. “The details of learning, learning coaching, period, but also how to teach it. He’s really detailed. I’ve been very impressed with him from our first time together at Kent State to 11 years later here at Notre Dame.
“He’s extremely deserving of this honor.”
