When Notre Dame football OC Gerad Parker needed a fresh start, David Cutcliffe gave him one

SOUTH BEND — When former Duke assistant Gerad Parker returns to Wallace Wade Stadium on Saturday night, it will be as the first-year offensive coordinator for Notre Dame football.

This also represents the first time he’s called plays for an Irish team looking to rebound from a painful setback, in this case a 17-14 loss at home in the final second against powerful Ohio State.

For three hours and 65 offensive snaps, Parker played football chess with Buckeyes defensive guru Jim Knowles. Remarkably, Notre Dame’s offense made it through with zero sacks, penalties, turnovers or dropped passes.

Gerad Parker: Small-town 'chip' and family's faith helped drive Gerad Parker to Notre Dame football

It still wasn’t good enough.

“It was a heavyweight fight,” Parker said this week. “We fell a step short and didn’t finish on some drives.”

Both men are loyal acolytes of David Cutcliffe, the noted Manning Brothers whisperer who restored Duke football to relevance during a 14-year run that ended with his resignation after the 2021 season. Knowles is a former Cornell head coach who spent nine seasons as a Cutcliffe assistant.

Knowles and Parker spent the 2017 season on the same Blue Devils staff, the latter as an offense-operations assistant. Cutcliffe, who turned 69 this month, is a special assistant for football relations to Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey.

Asked if he’d heard from his mentor these last few days, Parker smiled and shook his head.

“I know he was watching,” said Parker, who coached Duke’s wide receivers in 2018 before making stops at Penn State and West Virginia. “He’s a football fan. I love him to death. But I didn’t hear from him on that one. I think sometimes in tough ones, everybody ghosts you.”

Parker’s laugh carried not a rueful tone but one of good-natured understanding. That’s the business of coaching.

Duke provided a second chance when Gerad Parker needed one

There is no denying Cutcliffe’s impact on Parker’s personal and professional journey.

In the spring of 2017, Parker was still dealing with the fallout from a DUI arrest that February in West Lafayette, Ind., which left him adrift after East Carolina revoked its offer to coach wide receivers.

In rapid succession, Parker went from going winless in six games as interim head coach at Purdue to three weeks as running backs coach at Cincinnati to wondering if he’d ever get another chance at the college level.

Parker ultimately pleaded guilty in May 2019 to operating a vehicle while intoxicated. He received 364 days’ probation and performed 28 hours of community service.

Then-Duke assistant head coach Jim Bridge, who had worked with Parker at Purdue, was among those in Parker’s corner. So was Randy Sanders, Cutcliffe’s protégé and eventual successor as offensive coordinator at Tennessee in the late ‘90s.

Sanders was on staff at Kentucky when Parker, a former wideout, got his start as a graduate assistant at his alma mater.

“Everybody has made mistakes,” Cutcliffe told the Durham Herald-Sun in a June 2017 interview. “This is one I felt very strongly about. This was an outlier. There are trends. There are people that have issues. (Parker) is not one of those. I have zero concern.”

Added Cutcliffe: “We sat and talked. … I could just tell in conversation that he had the same values in coaching and approach. I had heard nothing but great things about him. I absolutely was overly impressed.”

In Parker’s two seasons on staff, Duke went 15-11 and won bowl games in back-to-back seasons for the first and only time in program history.

“When you are around a guy as offensive-minded as he was and ahead of his time as he was with offensive football … it’s invaluable,“ Parker said.

Among the countless lessons that will inform Parker’s work on Saturday night: How to get the most out of 24-year-old quarterback Sam Hartman and an injury-depleted corps of receivers and tight ends.

During those 20 months or so in Durham, N.C., Parker paid close attention to Cutcliffe and “how he treated the relationship of skill players to the quarterback and how the program has to take care of the development of the quarterback.”

That’s just one chapter in a book that will sustain Parker for a coaching lifetime.

“Being there around him to see him do that was something that I’ll always keep with me,” Parker said. “He was brilliant.”

Gerad Parker accepts 'the brunt' from Notre Dame fan base

Parker, 42, was a popular target for armchair OCs in the aftermath of such a narrow loss to the sixth-ranked Buckeyes.

Fans and media alike had no shortage of questions after Hartman was held to 175 passing yards, most of them on conservative throws to tight end Mitchell Evans (seven catches) and other safety valves.

If Evans was sufficiently recovered from a concussion that kept him out against Central Michigan, why wasn’t the nearly unstoppable “Mitch-a-palooza” sneak in play on a pair of fourth-and-1 tries that saw Hartman stopped both times?

The critics also wondered why Audric Estime, who came in as the nation’s leading rusher, wasn’t a bigger part of the game plan. And why was Estime taken off the field after barreling for an 11-yard run that seemingly put Notre Dame within one more first down of salting the game away?

Why were two straight pass plays called, the second of which nearly turned into a disastrous pick-six, when the clock was under three minutes and Ohio State was burning timeouts?

“I’m not second-guessing coach Parker, his play-calling, at all,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said. “It’s not, ‘Why did you call it?’ but, ‘Why didn’t we execute on this play? What do we have to correct?’ … It’s not play-calling. It’s not the call that wasn’t efficient. It was the execution of that play.”

As much as Parker appreciated that support from his boss, he publicly pointed the finger at just one person: himself.

“If we get that thing finished, then everybody is (saying), ‘We’re good,’ “ Parker said. “It didn’t get completed, so then I get the brunt.”

Parker held his right thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

“I could go through the calls with you, and you could map them out,” Parker said. “How many of these could we talk about that if they go the other way … Instead, it was just, ‘ugghh.’ “

The challenge this week, Parker said, is to make the necessary corrections without introducing doubt to an offense that’s still averaging just under 40 points a game.

“This is my job,” he said. “Empower those guys. Let them understand it’s on me. I want them to know that. I’ve got to put them in better situations. We’re a really good offense. They’d better know that by now, and they do.”

It wasn’t that long ago that Notre Dame reached the end zone on nine straight first-half possessions. As his former coaching benefactor once noted: There are trends, and then there are outliers.

“You can’t just see through all the good and then sit here and let them lose confidence,” Parker said. “We have to make sure they stay empowered to feel that way before we accept a failure and think that’s suddenly who we are.”

Follow Notre Dame football writer Mike Berardino on social media @MikeBerardino.

No. 11 Notre Dame (4-1) vs. No. 17 Duke (4-0)

When: Saturday, Sept. 30, 7:30 p.m. EDT

Where: Wallace Wade Stadium (40,004), Durham, N.C.

Rankings: Notre Dame is ranked No. 11 in AP poll and No. 13 in the US LBM Coaches Polls. Duke is ranked No. 17/16.

TV: ABC

Radio: WSBT (960 AM), WNSN (101.5 FM)

Line: Notre Dame opens as a 5.5-point favorite

Series: Notre Dame leads all-time series 5-2

Last meeting: No. 10 Notre Dame defeated Duke, 27-13, on Sept. 12, 2020 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Ind.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Duke gave Notre Dame football coordinator Gerad Parker fresh start