The Fighting Irish’s Co-Defensive Coordinator, Aaron Henry, grew up in church. Not just attending but living it, breathing it, fully convinced from a young age that his calling was the ministry. Before football ever became a career, Henry was thinking about becoming a missionary. He planned to spread the gospel, pour into people, and change lives through faith. But God had a different route picked out for him, one that eventually led him to Notre Dame’s locker rooms.

“I was on the borderline of either going to be a team chaplain at NC State,” Henry told reporters at his introductory press conference on Wednesday. “In my process of accepting that job, Bret Bielema called me to come up there and work at a football camp.” His old Wisconsin coach pulled him in a different direction, but the message Bielema delivered is what really stuck.

“He told me that I can still have the same impact as a missionary and pour into the people,” Henry said. “More importantly, I could also do it through the influence of the game of football, and I probably can reach just as many or more people.” That conversation changed everything. Henry became a graduate assistant at Arkansas in 2014, and the coaching career was off and running.

The journey from that GA role to South Bend wasn’t a straight line. Henry spent time at Rutgers in 2016, then NC State from 2017 to 2019, coaching corners and safeties, then Vanderbilt in 2020, and then Illinois starting in 2021. 

But wherever he went, the preacher never left the building. At NC State under Dave Doeren, his pregame speeches started going viral online. YouTube comments described them as something out of a sports movie. Doeren himself credited Henry’s spiritual depth. He recalled that he had tried to hire Henry as the team chaplain before he joined as a coach instead. 

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“If you speak positivity into these young men, and you speak resiliency, you speak hard work and just pride into them, they’ll do it,” Henry said of those speeches. The football field had become his pulpit.

Notre Dame is a program where that philosophy fits like a glove. When Henry walked into the Irish’s DB room for the first time, he was stunned. “I didn’t really understand the level of the talent in that room until the first day I walked in,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Okay. They are really good.'” But what hit him even harder was the character of the players.

“These guys are intrinsically motivated not to be just great football players, but to be great men,” he told reporters.“Some places, man, it’s just all ball. These dudes are motivated to be great men, to have high character.” He also spoke about how the players welcomed him before he even set foot in a meeting room. 

Henry turned down an NFL opportunity. The Jacksonville Jaguars came calling before he chose Notre Dame. Marcus Freeman and Chris Ash represented familiarity, and he wanted to shape young men. “You sit down, and you talk to Marcus Freeman, and you’re like, ‘I get it now,'” Henry said. “I could see why this dude’s had a lot of success at the age he’s at.” 

The kid from South Florida who first picked up a football because his grandmother wanted to get out of the house, who almost became a team chaplain, and who spent over a decade proving that football can be a vehicle for something bigger than wins and losses, that man is now coaching the defensive backs at one of the most iconic programs in college football history. The gospel is still getting spread. The platform just got a whole lot bigger.

Aaron Henry’s wife supports her husband in his life’s mission

After finishing up his NC State stint in 2019, Henry worked as DBs coach at Vanderbilt for one year and finally reunited with Bret Bielema in 2021. The Immokalee, Florida, native started as DBs coach and became a DC in 2023, taking Illinois to unprecedented heights. Henry now comes to South Bend after mentoring 11 defensive starters to All-Big Ten honors at the end of the 2025 season. Never mind that he led the Fighting Illini to 31st nationally in scoring defense in 2024 as the team finished with a 10-win season, tying the program record.

At Notre Dame, apart from instilling coaching discipline and his elite defensive knowledge, Henry will also lean on his faith based philosphy to churn out wins. In doing that, the 2011 First-team All-Big Ten also has support from his wife, who is a psychologist. ” We want to help young people,” Aaron’s wife, Camille Henry, said. “I want the kids, the student athletes, to know that even if you don’t feel like going to him if something’s going wrong, like I just want them to know they can come to me.”

Since faith plays a central role at Notre Dame, Henry won’t miss being an occasional team chaplain. Working together with defensive geniuses, his mentor, Chris Ash, and Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman, results will come swiftly. And no matter how hard the job becomes for Henry, he lives his life with a simple fact. “At the end of the day, people want to be loved, they want to be cared for,” Henry concluded.