Before the Tennessee football Volunteers, Long was the Notre Dame Fighting Irish offensive coordinator.
Even in a horrendous offensive year, Tennessee football staff members familiar with that side of the ball are getting looked at by other programs for promotional positions. The Vols are about to lose an off-field assistant in the process.
Chip Long, who joined UT as an analyst this past offseason, has been hired by the Tulane Green Wave to become the offensive coordinator under head coach Willie Fritz, who is in his fifth year in New Orleans, according to Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports. With a 5-5 record, Fritz’s team has one regular season game left this year, against the Memphis Tigers on Saturday.
Long joined Tennessee football after a three-year stint as offensive coordinator with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish under Brian Kelly. Before that, he spent one year as offensive coordinator at Memphis under Mike Norvell.
In 2018, Long was a finalist for the Broyles Award as Notre Dame went undefeated in the regular season, averaging over 440 yards and 31 points a game. The next year, the unit averaged 431 yards and nearly 37 points a game en route to an 11-2 season.
However, the Irish offense came up short in big games. They only scored three points in a College Football Playoff loss to the Clemson Tigers in 2018. Then, in their 2019 losses to the Georgia Bulldogs and Michigan Wolverines, they only scored 17 and 14 points respectively. Kelly replaced Long with Tommy Rees in 2020, and Long joined UT.
Honestly, with Notre Dame now averaging over 460 yards and still 37 points a game, they clearly haven’t missed anything with Long. It would have seemed that Long’s profile took a hit as well since he joined the Vols and has been part of a program with an abysmal offense this year.
Regardless, Long has the experience necessary to be a solid offensive coordinator for Tulane, and he’s familiar with the American Athletic Conference already. Tennessee football’s issues aren’t on him, so he’ll probably work out just fine there.