Logan Wilson, Al Golden’s first draft pick as a Bengals coach, thought he might be glimpsing the future when he and fellow Bengals linebacker Joe Bachie attended Monday night's national championship game.

After all, Wilson had heard the rumors. He just assumed that Golden would be head coach Zac Taylor’s first choice to replace Lou Anarumo, the only defensive coordinator Wilson's back seven has known.

When it was no longer rumor, Wilson offered a scouting report on how Golden's nationally acclaimed Notre Dame defense went at Ohio State before the Buckeyes held on to win.

"I saw some similar stuff from when he was in Cincinnati for a couple of years and he had some new stuff off of it," Wilson says. "It looked to be a lot of blitzing, and they ran a lot of man coverage. I'll be curious what we end up doing."

Wilson is in a long line as the Bengals set out to improve a defense that watched its team lose four games despite scoring 33 points. He heads into his sixth season off a knee injury that took him out of the last six games believing Golden "will be good for us."

Mike Mickens, Notre Dame's defensive backs coach and passing game coordinator, guarantees it.

"He's going to do great. A great mind. He'll succeed in whatever he does," says Mickens, the former University of Cincinnati Bearcat. "He's taught me to look at the game from different perspectives."

Golden, calling Wilson "one of my most favorite players of all-time," can't wait to start talking into Wilson's helmet in the middle of his defense. And it's mutual.

"He's really on the details. He expects a lot from you and just how he goes about his business and how he works. You kind of want to replicate that in your own way," Wilson says. "He allowed things to be simpler when he was with us, and so I feel like that's why we were able to play fast and I'm sure he'll be doing some similar stuff that we used to run. He will have his little nuances in the system. He obviously had that Notre Dame defense cooking."

When the Bengals offered home cooking to replace Anarumo, Golden couldn't resist. "I'm the cheapest re-location in history," he says. Not only did his family never move after he left the Bengals to coach at Notre Dame so his kids could stay in school, but his fingerprints still live in the nooks and crannies of the defense three years after Super Bowl LVI.

Start with Wilson's linebackers room. Then go to the safeties room, the home of coach Jordan Kovacs who worked under Golden assisting the linebackers the two years he was here. There's also the cubbyhole of defensive assistant Ronnie Regula, who coached for him at Notre Dame after playing for him when Golden was the head coach at the University of Miami.

"I loved playing for him. These guys will love playing for him. They know he's going to put them in the best situation possible to be successful," Regula says. "He earned a lot of respect talking in the room, commanding the room, because he knows they're looking out for them."

The Xs and Os can be pretty much dispatched with when it comes to what Golden is going to do. A guy who has coached against Matthew Stafford and Joe Burrow in training camps is going to do it all.

His key words are flexible, adaptable, malleable. That means he'll play whatever coverages and scheme fits his players that day against that particular opponent.

"Whatever it takes to win the game," Golden says.

What took Notre Dame to the national championship game was a relentless man-to-man defense, and for the second straight year the Irish led the nation in opposing passer efficiency, and safety Xavier Watts' 13 interceptions paced the country as well.

But is that what it's going to take to contend in the AFC North? Taylor made that knowledge of the division a top qualification for this hire.

"It all starts with the acronym BEST, right?" Golden says. "Number one is Ball disruption. Put a premium on that. Our number one job is to support our quarterback and people are like, what does that mean? We've got to get the ball. That's our number one job. Give him opportunities. E is for Effort. Finish. And then, Situational masters. Just being great in the red zone, being awesome on third down, understanding how to conduct a two-minute drill. And then Team Tackling.

"More than that, the overarching theme of our defense is empowerment. So at the end of the day, whether it's Logan, the safeties, whoever it is, they have to make decisions on the grass, and we have to empower them."

So the Xs and Os are going to be the Xs and Os. He'll play man. He'll play Cover Two. He'll blitz.

"We'll do what our players do best," Golden says. "Every game is different like a bingo board. If you approach everything the same, they get you. Not really our M.O."

What may end up being more intriguing is how Golden gets it to work with a uniquely vast resume that has seen the game from both sides.

He's old enough to be the junior tight end who famously helped Penn State bring down No. 1 Notre Dame with a late touchdown catch on what used to be a rare nationally televised game. As a head coach himself at Temple and the University of Miami, he was one of the last to wear a tie and slacks on game day.

He cut his defensive teeth on Howard Schnellenberger disciples. But at 55, he's also young enough to have worked on the offensive side of the ball with former Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan in Detroit, where passing game guru Jim Caldwell was the head coach.

On Thursday when he walked into the office of Kovacs, born the year Golden caught the ball against the Irish, he got hugs from him and offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher and was catching up on their babies who were born after he left.

"Understanding the flow of the game," Mickens says of Golden's gifts. "He knows what offense coordinators are trying to do to you and how they're attacking your schemes. We matched up personnel with nickel and dime packages doing a lot of things college teams don't do."

Along the way, Golden has kept a recruiter's touch and they'll tell you he has connected with people in a people's way. Mickens had to laugh Thursday at how one of his players, safety Adon Shuler, calls Golden "The Godfather."

"They're both Jersey guys," Mickens says.

Golden, born and raised in New Jersey, somehow strikes a chord with guys like Wilson, one of Wyoming's most famous people, and Regula, a walk-on who realized his boyhood dream to play for his hometown Hurricanes in Miami.

"I feel like he'll get after us when we need to be getting after," Wilson says. "I think that's what makes great coaches great. They know when the right time is to get after you, but also to take care of you and care about you more as a human being than a player and Al does that.

"When coaches make that effort, you feel like you're wanted. You're able to return playing hard for a guy like that."

While Golden helped get Wilson started on a career that put him in the NFL elite, as the head man at Miami he helped Regula get a full ride to Miami as a senior after years of grinding.

"He took the time to talk to me. He gave me the opportunity to walk on to the team," Regula says. "I paid my dues. He saw that. He monitored me. We would always have exit meetings and we'd go over the things I needed to work on to improve, how he saw me in the organization. That's how I ended up earning the scholarship."

A scholarship turned into a job under Golden at Notre Dame for two years. When Regula came to the Bengals as a defensive assistant a year ago, he brought a Golden background of detail to the gig.

Talk to Regula about one of his many jobs, charting the opposing quarterback's cadence, and he'll give you a ballad.

"I took away his preparation, his attention to details," Regula says of the Golden Effect. "I want to give our guys the best and most information to our guys. Yes, I get that from Al.

"He's the same guy every day. Same demeanor."

Those days begin early. Golden figures the latest he gets up is about 4:45. He's not a beat-the-traffic guy. The only times are this past season when he was driving from his home on Cincinnati's eastern edge to get back to South Bend, Ind., after a bye and the Bengals had home games.

"Have to get in front of that traffic crossing over to 74," Golden says.

One of those Sundays, the radio call of Dan Hoard and Dave Lapham took Golden the four hours to Notre Dame as he lived and died on every snap of the overtime loss to the Ravens that was a mosh pit of points. That's one of the division results Taylor is trying to turn around with Golden's hire.

"That's how we got there the last time," says Golden of that 2021 Super Bowl season the Bengals held AFC North foes to 20 points per game. The average is 24 in the 18 games since.

"Everything that we're going to do is in the backdrop of the AFC North," Golden says. "How we take the ball away, how we tackle, the details that we do, the things that we need to defend, are all going to be in the backdrop of the AFC North in the offseason.

"Once you get in the tournament, we can win it. Especially with the quarterback we have."

Golden is still driving. But he took the exit with the familiar surroundings, and the Bengals are along for the ride.

"It's going to be nice," Wilson says, "to already know coming in how a guy practices and works."