Naturally, I am aware that USC grads struggle with reason and logic. I will go ahead and point out to you that 10 win seasons aren't created equal because of strength of schedule and team performance in quality matchups. I would encourage you to compare the two seasons and try to find a regular season blowout in 2015. We lost at Clemson in a hurricane on a failed two point conversion and at Stanford on a last second field goal. We also didn't play two low level Group of 5 teams. Instead, we got a ranked Temple. I would also like to point out that Brian VanGorder was our DC. I would forgive you for not being tuned in for all of Notre Dame's games that year, I'm sure it's difficult to keep track of the games of your alma maters as well as Notre Dame.
With moderately better defensive coaching we're getting blown out in the national championship game instead of getting blown out in the Fiesta Bowl. 2015 is a debacle because for all the talent that team had, they ONLY won 10 games. This is not hard.
No shit? A Brian Kelly debacle? You don't say. A bigger debacle than getting blown out by Michigan? No.
15 years from now no one is going to remember 2019. We're all going to wonder what Jaylon and that defense could have done with a coach that schemed to their strengths. Looks like we both agree that not all 10-year win seasons are equal. Maybe we should leave it there.
In the last game of the respective seasons, one we had to look at Shaw's stupid smug face and the other we blew them out. So that's something.
Two things still irk me re: sports...the 2009 Stanley Cup final and the 2015 ND team. What could have been with competent defensive coaching in 2015...
Some decent nugs in the ii podcast -Kerry cook seems to be in play to replace light -Pete doesn’t think long will go to Memphis -Crawford should come back, McKinley is gone.
Didn't Cooks leave to take a lesser role at Oklahoma? The same Oklahoma whose defense has been garbage for the last 5 years. Fuck him.
And now he’s at Texas Tech IIRC That would be an underwhelming hire, and puts us back on the trend of Kelly just hiring his buddies
yeah I would have thought it made sense for him to come back too but they said he isn’t grad transferring so it sounds like he is just fine with football. And far as cooks he’s a pretty good recruiter and I remember thinking he was a decent coach while he was here so he’s probably an upgrade.
Also the other possibility that Pete mentioned was having terry Joseph coach the entire secondary and promoting one of the current GAs to full time LB coach. Which no thank you.
McKinley isnt good. I'd rather see Wilkens or another young guy get a shot. If Crawford came back that would be ideal. However I think even if he isn't getting drafted if his goal is to play NFL. He should go and get a tryout. He comes back to ND he very well could get hurt again
Rylie Mills Alexander Ehrensberger Jordan Botelho Drew Pyne Caleb Offord Xavier Watts Jay Brunelle Isaiah Pryor (Ohio State transfer)
I like this class a good amount even though it is small, The only player I really don't see having too much potential is Clarence Lewis (I am terrible at evaluating DBs though so that means absolutely nothing). Just wish they had landed one more sure thing type of prospect at DB instead of all these projects. Kelly said the biggest gap they had against Clemson was skill position players (I think coaching is probably the #1 diff but te he he) and he went out and got three 5 star type talents at the skill positions with Tyree, Johnson, Mayer so that is something I guess.
he's been successful for a long long time, and has a lot of wins, and i'm happy to have had him for 10 years, but this seems...high
Spoiler: ... Share The Big 12 is known for offensive innovation more than anything else on the football field. It’s definitely not a defense-first conference. Iowa State countered against the high-powered offenses with some innovation of their own on defense. Defensive coordinator Jon Heacock switch to a 3-3-5 during the 2017 season and has done a tremendous job of coaching to not only to the talent on the roster, but also adjusting to all of the great offenses ISU has had to play against from week to week. They finished 36th in yards per play (5.23), 22nd in S&P+, and 40th in FEI. So any way you slice it, it’s a top-40 defense that overachieves relative to the raw talent they have to work with. That’s because they are very well-coached in both scheme and fundamentals. They confuse quarterbacks with coverage looks and play sound football with very few breakdowns. That’s why they’re a good defense despite not creating many turnovers (only six interceptions and 112th in total turnovers). It’s not hard to see why Brian Kelly was so complimentary of Heacock or why Kelly considered Heacock for the open defensive coordinator position after Mike Elko left for Texas A&M. This defense maximizes their talent and frustrates opposing offenses consistently. They force teams into 3&outs on 40.9% of their drives (7th). Confuse and disrupt They don’t have elite athletes on the back end of their defense, but they rarely give up plays and are 26th in yards per attempt (6.6) for opposing quarterbacks. A lot of this has to do with them starting with what looks like three high safeties and shifting around both pre and post-snap. My friend Ian Boyd covers Texas and the Big 12 extensively. I know he has praised ISU for all of the variations they have used to played cover two. Usually that means two high safeties, but they will use the corners as deep half players and have the safeties play downhill to the flats in an inverted cover two look. They’ll play two safeties high and use the third safety, 1st team All-Big 12 defensive back Greg Elsworth, as a robber reading the quarterback to break up plays in the middle of the field. He has 11 passes defensed in 2019. They do a great job of mixing in dropping eight into coverage with zone pressures with the linebackers and Elsworth coming on blitzes. It’s very unpredictable within the game and that makes them very difficult to prepare for. The heart of the defense is at linebacker and they have three very good ones. They are instinctive and are all effective blitzers. The starting group has combined for 27.5 tackles for loss. MIke linebacker O’Rien Vance leads the team in tackles for loss and sacks. Mike Rose moved from Mike to Sam (nickel) this season and has been a beast defending plays on the perimeter (8.5 TFLs). Will linebacker Marcel Spears is undersized (218), but covers a lot of ground. While they rely on these three to create havoc as blitzers, they can all cover too. The strength of the defense for ISU is at the second level. A strong run defense Big plays are given up defending the run when teams tackle poorly or have poor run fits. ISU doesn’t have many of either, which is why they’ve only given up 12 runs of 20 yards or more this season. They are solid with their front three as well with nose tackle Ray Lima (2nd team All-Big 12) occupying double teams. He’s a big factor on runs up the middle and Rose make it’s very difficult to run to the field with how physical he can be versus receivers and tight tends. That’s the big advantage of having a 240 pound player at Sam. The Irish are going to have to find some success attacking the boundary in the running game with ISU using their corner as a force player often. Whether it’s Tony Jones, C’Bo Flemister, or whoever it may be, they have to break tackles against defensive backs to have success. Not much of a pass rush Four games into the season they lost their best pass rusher, Jaquan Bailey. Without him they have struggled to generate a consistent rush without bringing the blitz. They finished 75th in sack rate. Notre Dame’s protection finished 16th in sack rate and with Ian Book’s ability to escape pressure, this is an area where Notre Dame projects to have a big advantage. That lack of a pass rush hurts them on 3rd down (98th in conversion rate) where they haven’t been close to good enough getting off the field. How they’ve fared against top-25 offenses Consistency has been an issue for the Irish offense all season, but they did finish ranked 20th in S&P+ (27th in FEI). During the season ISU faced four offenses that were ranked in the top-25 according to S&P+: Oklahoma, Baylor, Texas, and Oklahoma State. While they shut down Texas and Baylor holding those teams to a combined 43 points and 5.08 yards per play, they gave up a combined 76 points and 7.38 YPP to Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. The big difference in those games was that Baylor and Texas couldn’t run the ball against ISU (3.06 yards per carry for Baylor and 2.08 for Texas). The Oklahoma schools ran for 4.94 and 5.51 respectively with big assists from Oklahoma’s Kennedy Brooks (a 48-yard run) and Oklahoma State’s Chuba Hubbard (a 65-yard run). Notre Dame has to continue to find solutions to running the football to have success against the Cyclones’ defense. It would help a lot if this was a game where Jafar Armstrong broke out with a big run or two (he showed signs of it against Stanford) or if they can get a big play or two from Ian Book or Braden Lenzy running the football.
So disappointing that in a year where not only the ACC is down, but the entire NCAA field is as well, that ND can’t field a competent team. What a missed opportunity. Brey needs to get his shit together or move along. No more excuses.
It's kind of amazing how quickly he's burned through the goodwill generated during that three year run.
Swarbrick needs to held accountable here as well, it was obvious to everyone the program was headed this direction but he did nothing to intervene or hold Brey accountable
The article Spoiler SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Jack Swarbrick got the key from the front desk under an alias, then headed down the hallway on instructions from the search firm contracted by Notre Dame. He was told to open a particular side door of this nondescript hotel in northern Kentucky until the other half of his meeting arrived. That’s where Swarbrick would shake hands with Brian Kelly for the first time and head up the back stairwell. They’d meet, hash out program building and talk through big-picture stuff. But mostly, Notre Dame’s athletics director and Notre Dame’s future head coach wanted to get a measure of one another. Was this going to be a fit or not? Today marks one decade since Notre Dame formally introduced Kelly as its head coach. Ten years and two unbeaten regular seasons later, with another contract extension seemingly imminent, it’s easy to say this was all meant to be for an Irish Catholic from Boston. It wasn’t that simple, though. Not for Notre Dame, which was moving on from the expensive mistake of Charlie Weis. Not for Kelly, who days later would come within a second of playing for a national championship at Cincinnati. Before all that, two headstrong CEO types had to impress one another. And it’s not clear who had to win over the other most. Notre Dame needed a coach after firing Weis on Nov. 30. Kelly didn’t need a new job and was already negotiating with Cincinnati to stay put. “The first meeting, I remember it really being about Notre Dame,” Kelly said. “This is who we are. We’re not this. We’re going to follow these guidelines. I think he was trying to gauge my interest level.” “I didn’t have a strong sense of Brian and I did have that with some of the other candidates,” Swarbrick said. “I had watched his games and drawn some clear impressions about how his teams played. But I knew little about him. (Some media) said he was the obvious choice, that of course you’re going to hire him. I didn’t have that feeling.” Three hours later, Swarbrick had gotten a read on Kelly and vice versa. They’d meet again in the New York the next week during the college football awards circuit. Before that, Kelly finished off the regular season with Cincinnati against Pittsburgh, a bonkers game in which the Bearcats trailed by 21 points, took a fourth-quarter lead, surrendered it with less than two minutes remaining and then retook it for good when Tony Pike hit Armon Binns for the game-winning touchdown with 33 seconds remaining. Swarbrick watched that comeback. Then he watched Nebraska upset Texas in the Big 12 championship game … until the Cornhuskers didn’t. A video replay showed Texas quarterback Colt McCoy’s last-gasp pass go out of bounds with one second remaining, which turned into a 46-yard game-winning field goal. Alabama would play Texas in the national championship game, not Cincinnati. “That would have been much more complicated,” Swarbrick said. “I certainly would have changed my position because my focus was, ‘Are you prepared to come now?’ I just thought I had such a sense of, we need to get going. That was controversial and unpopular nationally. But I was of the view that our program couldn’t wait.” But first, Swarbrick had to get out of this hotel. And that wasn’t so simple, like a lot of things in a coaching search that felt efficiently simple in public but at times nervously awkward in private. “I come back down and hand them the key, and of course the front desk can’t help themselves: ‘Well, Mr. Smith, we hope you had a good visit to our hotel,’ ” Swarbrick said. “It looks like the classic executive affair. A clearly bogus name, prepaid room and I’m there for three hours. Oh, God.” What does it take to hire a football coach everybody thinks you’re going to hire anyway? More than you’d think. Before they could plot the Irish’s return to the national title picture, a vision realized in 2018, Swarbrick (far left) and Kelly had to take the measure of each other. (Kirby Lee / USA Today) Here’s how the search that ended with Brian Kelly started. Swarbrick drew up the traits he believed Notre Dame needed to repair a football program the athletics director described as “broken.” It needed a sitting college head coach. No NCAA violations. A personality that matched Notre Dame. And lots of wins. Then Notre Dame took those criteria and screened them against every current college head coach. “Just that takes out 100 of them,” Swarbrick said. “The number of agents who say you talked to their client in job searches, every time somebody says they’ve withdrawn, it’s (B.S.). I had people withdraw from this search that I never talked to and nobody from Notre Dame ever spoke to them or their agent.” Swarbrick said he had about four other in-person opening interviews just like the one he had with Kelly in that Kentucky hotel. He said he had maybe another dozen interviews like that over the phone. “A lot of these interviews were around a very specific sort of dynamics of ‘Tell me how you build this program,’ ” Swarbrick said. “One of the things I always remember about Brian was one of the first things he addressed in that was how you schedule the day, to make it more efficient for the students. And we sort of didn’t have any focus on that.” That next week in New York, Swarbrick conducted the second round of interviews but wasn’t exactly sure how to mask the whole operation. With most of the college football industry at the Waldorf Astoria, Swarbrick stayed a block or two away. He’d kept Kelly’s first interview and just about everything else quiet to date, other than checking in daily with Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins. Jenkins had given Swarbrick space to be his own search committee, and Notre Dame’s athletics director took advantage of that. He flew commercial when it made sense. He didn’t use the Notre Dame plane when he needed to get somewhere quickly. Still, how do you keep a search for the next Notre Dame head coach quiet? “The best piece of advice I probably got in the whole process was from Bill Polian,” Swarbrick said. “How the hell do I keep a lid on this? Bill said, ‘Hide in plain sight.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Go to New York and no one cares.’ It was brilliant.” It’s not clear exactly when Kelly met with Swarbrick in New York, but at 3:58 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 7, Kelly tweeted, “Just informed our team that Notre Dame has contacted me and I will listen to what they have to say.” Brian Kelly ✔@CoachBrianKelly Just informed our team that Notre Dame has contacted me and I will listen to what they have to say. 11 3:58 PM - Dec 7, 2009 Twitter Ads info and privacy 235 people are talking about this Regardless, Kelly was not the only candidate to advance to the second round of interviews. Swarbrick didn’t reveal names but said two other coaches were interviewed in New York. And despite an ESPN report days later that Notre Dame was interested in Connecticut coach Randy Edsall, Swarbrick said the Huskies head coach, who has since flamed out at Maryland and is back in Storrs, was not one of them. For Kelly, the second interview didn’t bring any more pressure, just more detail. He had been through this before, moving up from Grand Valley State to Central Michigan to Cincinnati in the previous seven years. Real pressure, Kelly said, was the jump from Grand Valley State to Central Michigan, moving from a winning culture to an apathetic one. “That could have been a career-ender,” Kelly said. “This was not a matter of, ‘I gotta have this job.’ I wasn’t running from a job. I think we had talked about it at great length, my wife and I, we finally made the decision that Notre Dame was the right place for us, but it didn’t feel like there was a lot of pressure. We’ll get this done, but if we don’t, we’re OK, too.” Still, Kelly remembers that interview in New York as a chance to sell himself to Swarbrick and pitch exactly what he’d bring to Notre Dame. Kelly checked the program-building box. He had that central casting vibe, too, but Notre Dame had gone down that path before with George O’Leary. Still, Kelly, who has the skills of a retail politician in small spaces, won over Swarbrick. To close the deal, Swarbrick had to get Kelly in front of Jenkins. That required a third interview, which Swarbrick decided would be in Atlanta. So Notre Dame’s athletics director called his boss and asked him to get on a plane heading south. Swarbrick would meet Jenkins there. Then Swarbrick called Kelly to confirm he’d make this meeting, roughly 48 hours after that sit-down in New York. “Right before we were going to Atlanta, Brian’s phone died and we couldn’t get in touch with him,” Jenkins said. “It was a nervous period where we thought, ‘Oh, he’s flown the coop on us.’ ” “Yep, that’s correct,” Kelly admitted. “We have to pay for our phones at Cincinnati! I remember Jack was desperately trying to get ahold of me. He got ahold of (agent) Trace Armstrong, who got ahold of me. ‘I think you should probably take this call.’ ” Jenkins admitted he felt nerves flying to Atlanta for a meeting that wasn’t quite an interview but not quite a formality either. Jenkins remembers a couple trustees present, along with Swarbrick, Kelly and his agent. “You can be a very successful coach in Division I football and think you can insert your program at Notre Dame and you will fail. It’s a different place,” Jenkins said. “It requires a certain kind of person. “I’m somewhat skeptical with interviews because they’re people giving off an impression. But Brian was a relaxed character. He wasn’t one of those crazily intense coaches. That gave me a lot of assurances that he would do a good job.” Working backward, the Atlanta interview likely happened Dec. 9. Notre Dame returned Kelly directly to the Cincinnati area the day before his final team banquet. It used a NetJets plane to do it, limiting the ability to track tail numbers. At that point the travelling party was basically Jenkins, Swarbrick and Kelly, with a memorandum of understanding signed and Notre Dame figuring out how to introduce its new head coach. Cincinnati was set for that team function, celebrating its undefeated season. Kelly wanted to be the one to tell his team he was leaving. Notre Dame agreed to keep everything quiet until the unveiling on Dec. 11. “And so we pick a non-obvious airport to fly into, not the most convenient one. I mean, this was a really out of the way private airport,” Swarbrick said. “Pull up, put down the jet way, Brian’s the only one getting out. The guy putting the blocks under the wheels of the plane says, ‘Hi, Coach Kelly!’ ” “Here we go,” Kelly said. “New life.” Almost. Not quite. Throughout the interview process Kelly kept in touch with his older brother Paul, who trades petroleum with career stops in Chicago and New York before returning to Boston for the last 10 years. Brian and Paul, just 11 months apart, are close. Paul’s oldest daughter Meredith graduated from Notre Dame four years ago and is on track to graduate from Columbia Law. Brian’s daughter Grace is a student at Notre Dame right now. Brian bounced ideas off Paul while climbing the coaching ladder, from turning down Eastern Michigan to weighing interest from Tennessee. The courtship with Notre Dame was the same story, the brothers trading texts and calls, sounding out whether this really made sense. “I think I saw him in New York just before he took off for Atlanta,” Paul said. “The vibe was it’s going to happen. Obviously, you’re always a little bit guarded after going through that process before. But he certainly believed it was happening.” After the meeting in Atlanta, Kelly told his brother and father, Paul Sr., to head to South Bend. This was it. Paul Sr. and wife Regina would fly from Boston to Chicago, meet Paul Jr. there, then drive to South Bend. Brian Kelly was going to be the next head coach at Notre Dame. “We were on cloud nine at that point,” said Paul Sr. “But then we’re in the airport waiting for the plane to come into Boston, and the scroll on ESPN across the bottom says, ‘Randy Edsall interested in Notre Dame and Notre Dame interested in Randy Edsall.’ Maybe Brian gave them too much crap and they said, ‘See ya later.’ Should we get on the plane?” Paul Sr. and Regina, who attend virtually every one of their son’s radio shows, plus press conferences and practices, got on the plane. Then they drove to South Bend with Paul Jr. to see Brian introduced as Notre Dame’s head football coach. By then the story was awkwardly out, Kelly forced to tell his players a night earlier after that team banquet at Cincinnati, the players finding out the news on their phones. “It was actually very poorly handled,” Kelly said. “We were 10 minutes into the Cincinnati banquet and it leaked. I had won coach of the year, and they’re telling me during the coach of the year interview that, ‘I heard you got the job at Notre Dame.’ The kids’ phones were blowing up.” “I don’t know how that leaked. But it got leaked from here.” A day later Kelly and his family were in South Bend, figuring out their new environs. These days Paul Sr. and Regina live in a condo during the season with a view of Touchdown Jesus, the Basilica and the Golden Dome. Back then Paul Sr. and Paul Jr. were just looking for parking. When their car rolled into campus for the first time, they weren’t exactly sure where to go and turned toward the grotto. “The gate goes down and we didn’t have a pass,” Paul Sr. remembers. “Paul (Jr.) says, ‘I’m the big brother of the head coach!’ The guard just says, ‘Turn around and go down there.’ I don’t know if he thought we were Charlie Weis’ brother or what. Not a second thought. “Now we can get down to the grotto anytime we want.” That morning Notre Dame introduced Brian Kelly as its next head coach, believing it had found the best match for the job since Lou Holtz arrived 24 years earlier. Maybe the search was a precursor of what was to come, as Notre Dame has been rebuilt under Kelly, even if the blueprints required ongoing work. Kelly and Notre Dame seem more at peace now than they have at any point in the last decade, including that hiring process with more tumult than anybody let on. Only 14 FBS head coaches have been in their jobs longer than Kelly. Next season he’ll tie Holtz, Ara Parseghian and Frank Leahy with 11 seasons in charge of the Irish. Only Knute Rockne lasted longer at 13 years. Kelly lacks the national championship of those four coaches with statues around Notre Dame Stadium. And Kelly can basically live with not being bronzed, in part because the Irish are now winning in a way they couldn’t when he arrived. For Notre Dame’s head coach, the view looks pretty good after a third consecutive 10-win season. As for the men who hired him, they feel the same way. “Looking back at that decision 10 years ago, I couldn’t be more happy,” Jenkins said. “I don’t think any coach in America, given the constraints that he’s working under, I don’t think any coach in America has done better. We couldn’t be happier with Brian and the success that he’s had at Notre Dame and how he’s represented the University so well.” In other words, it’s been a fit.
That article is proof that the standards at ND are similar to 2nd tier programs. 10 years all Killy has done is beat up on marginal teams and or programs. Still really no significant wins or bowl wins. Plus he killed a kid which never seems to get mentioned in these puff pieces.