Mike McCray, the former University of Michigan standout who spent this past season as Notre Dame’s assistant secondary coach, has accepted the outside linebackers position at UMass.
New Minutemen coach Don Brown, who earlier in his career led UMass to national prominence at the Football Championship Subdivision level, has been piecing together a younger staff in his return to UMass, hiring key coaches with regional knowledge and, in the case of his former player McCray, an up-and-coming young coach who’s played the game at its highest levels.
McCray also has been around some of the sport’s brightest defensive minds, with his time under the venerable Brown at Michigan and this past season on the defensive side of the ball of Marcus Freeman’s Fighting Irish defense.
Freeman, a former Broyles Award finalist, was named Notre Dame’s head coach earlier this month after Brian Kelly bolted Notre Dame for LSU at the conclusion of Notre Dame’s regular season.
McCray had worked with an Irish secondary that had to consistently shuffle its lineup over the season due to injuries, most notably to All-American safety Kyle Hamilton, and closed the season playing by far the unit’s best football of the year.
McCray spent the previous two seasons in a pair of roles at his alma mater; after a year as an intern, McCray was elevated to a full-time defensive analyst for the Wolverines.