How to lose a football game in which your opponent repeatedly gives you chances to win it:
– Pass the ball more than you run it, even when the conditions dictate you shouldn’t. (ND had 26 official pass attempts and 38 rush attempts, but at least 5 of those ‘rushes’ were sacks and a few more were scrambles. ND called more passes than runs. In conditions that put last year’s ‘monsoon’ at Clemson to shame.)
– Refuse to adjust even in key spots. (Did ND run the ball in the red zone even one time? I’m not sure that they did. Instead, they dropped DeShone Kizer back to throw pro-style routes for reasons that escape me.)
– Be completely unable to respond to predictable play calls. (NC State brought in running quarterback Jalan McClendon in the second half to run the most predictable running QB package ever, and yet he still ran free for several big plays. None of them, of course, led to any points, thanks to NC State’s horrific special teams, but they hurt ND’s field position badly.)
– Be predictable yourselves. (Hey guys, when Josh Adams splits wide in motion out of the backfield, the ball is going to him. Every time. When ND puts several players on one side of the line, the run play is going that way. Every time. No setups, no surprises. The masterful play calling Brian Kelly used to damn near beat Florida State in 2014 seems like eons ago.)
– Not commit to any style of play. (Why did we bring in Malik Zaire for one play? It was a decent idea. McClendon proved that. But we snapped it to him once and took him out. There was never anything resembling any kind of plan. Just grabbing whatever plays sounded cute.)
Poor ND defense, which, even given they had a huge assist from the horrible weather, was actually ok. There were some hiccups, as there always will be, but for the most part when they needed stops they got them, despite being put in poor spots by the offense. It reminded me of The Season That Shall Not Be Mentioned, as this entire year does.
There was a clear path to winning this game: Give the ball to Josh Adams. Give it to Dexter Williams. If you want to give the ball to the receivers, great. Run a few quick slants, run a jet sweep, even maybe a reverse if you’re really feeling adventurous. Brian Kelly and the staff decided instead not to tweak their usual play in any way. And that sums up why they fail. They’re (outside of 2012, looking like the outlier to end all outliers) unwilling to accept that sometimes the best way to win isn’t exactly what they want to do.
Kizer was awful. There were a few drops, but he was awful. Some of the blame falls on the coaches that put so much of the game in his hands in these conditions, of course. But he was terrible. 9/26, 54 yards is butt-ugly no matter what the conditions.
BIG-PICTURE BRIAN KELLY WHINING SECTION
I fail to see any way left to defend Brian Kelly. When Charlie Weis suffered through The Season That Shall Not Be Mentioned, you could at least put forth an argument that it was going to be bad anyway due to the personnel. (It shouldn’t have been THAT bad, of course, but it was safe to say it wasn’t going to be great.) But this Kelly team is by his own design. This is year seven. The entire team is his. The entire coaching staff is his. Everything about the program, even the stadium and the gameday rituals, are pretty much his. There is literally no excuse whatsoever for how bad Notre Dame is at football.
You’ll probably still see a few national writers talk about ‘how hard’ the ND job is and how you can’t fire Kelly. SI’s Andy Staples has already, and he isn’t alone.
I don’t, because I think ND realizes its job is very, very hard relative to the expectations. https://t.co/6LS5WOI0j7
— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) September 27, 2016
Don’t listen to it. It’s nonsense. That might excuse why ND was unable to beat anyone that was legitimately very good last year but still managed to win 10 games. It doesn’t excuse why ND lost to Duke. Or to NC State. Or, to go back in time, Tulsa, Northwestern, South Florida or Navy. ND is better than these programs. They should always be better. If they’re not, then they should just junk the whole enterprise, join the ACC full-time, and stop pretending they care about winning.
There are at least four more surefire losses on this schedule – Stanford, Miami, Virginia Tech and USC. Army and Navy are coin flips. Guess what? That’s the whole schedule. 2-10 is very much in play. 4-8 is probably the best-case scenario. We are getting a new coach next season if ND remotely cares about anything. So start scouting.
I highly doubt we’re getting a new head coach this off-season. The excuse will be that we fired the DC, let’s give him a chance to win with a new one that fixes the defense. This season is written off, and today will be blamed on the weather.
But as I said in the chat, today wasn’t about the weather–it was a factor, but to me it highlighted how much the passing game has hid structural flaws in this offense and program. With the downfield pass taken away, our complete inability to run block was exposed. The coach’s inability to adjust to conditions and go away from their preferred play calling was exposed. I’d be less upset if we made smart decisions, trying to protect the ball and play field position, and just lost because of fluke weather nonsense. That’s not what happened today. NC State played smarter than we did. Run the ball, let the other team make a mistake, and capitalize on it. They did, we didn’t. We had our chances, and threw incompletes. You can blame the rain, but that doesn’t excuse the result, as there were things we could do to mitigate those issues and our coaches chose not to.
The defense was bad, and BVG needed to go. But BVG wasn’t the entire issue, and a new DC isn’t going to fix everything. To keep his job, if I were BK, he’d have to beat USC, win one of Miami/VT, and be competitive against Stanford. And not lose to Army or Navy. Just to earn the right to try again next year with a homerun DC hire. But the DC isn’t everything wrong with this team, so I need to see in those games that he can fix the run game, stop making stupid decisions, etc. Hard not to agree that 2012 is the outlier.
We’re not winning a bidding war with LSU, Texas, etc. Firing BK this year means we’ll end up with a similar coach–maybe he’ll be good, maybe he’ll be mediocre, but we won’t get the homerun. I don’t say that to say “keep Kelly”–at this point, I don’t even know. Next year it’ll be two more conference power teams with easier paths to success and lower standards willing to pay way more money.
Sigh.
Maybe these instant reactions are not the best.
Also, I don’t know why we even ask who the next ND coach is going to be. As I said in the chat, it’s like federal law or something that Butch Jones replaces Kelly.
Is there something in particular that links Jones to ND? Or is that a joke about Jones’ coaching performances? I honestly know next to nothing about him.
Edit: Just got off font-of-all-knowledge Wikipedia & I see he followed Kelly @ CMU & U of C.
Yes, that’s the joke.
Apparently someone thought I was serious…lol.
Today was another bad lost. Kelly pretty much pissed away any chance at a bowl game with his play calling and lack of second half adjustments. With that said he isn’t going anywhere. Not this year. Everyone screaming to fire Kelly thinks ND has a shot at one of the hot coaches being mentioned this year. There are openings at LSU and you can probably add Texas and U$C to that list. Irish fans won’t like this but those jobs are looked at as the better job right now. Its easier to win there and most important its easier to recruit at those schools.
Seems like a bad situation to me for ND. I don’t think ND outbids any of those places nor does any top coach even want to go to ND. I wouldn’t if I were them. I do finally think he may need to go and I know we’re not getting a top tier coach. So, like I said – bad situation.
I hear everyone say that the ND head coach job is not as good as other elite programs (e.g., Texas, LSU, USC, etc.) – I happen to agree with that. However, is it just because of recruiting difficulties with higher admission standards, or are there other factors that make the ND job more difficult / less attractive?
And higher standards once they are in school: we actually make the players take legit classes, we actually hold them accountable for their behavior unlike *some* places.
And we don’t have nearly as many shady boosters providing $$.
Navy putting a hurting on Houston.
Hokies killing NC.
We might beat Army, at least.
UNC’s making me feel a little better about our performance but VT is scaring me.
Jeez Andy, how do you keep drawing the short straw on doing these quick takes? Picturing Murtaugh at 18-Stripes Corporate HQ asking you to do this late on Friday afternoon:
Anyway, further to your points, the play calling was awful – agreed. The defense offered no real hope for non-monsoon conditions against a competent opponent – agreed. Kizer had a bad day – agreed. Not so much on the dropped balls but more on the thought process. Hey kid, after you count to eight or so, it may be time to throw the ball away.
Re: your point on Zaire coming in, I had the impression that Kizer was a bit shaken up on the play and that’s why MZ was in there. No idea if that is true – just what I thought at the time.
Kelly’s demeanor on the sideline is like someone who wants to be anywhere but right there. ND might not need to pull the trigger – I don’t know.
I actually volunteered for this. I forget why.
I’m unavailable for the next 2, though, which is probably for the best for both me and you guys.
Kelly is a dead man walking. He’s not going to be fired this season, but he’s going to lay a egg next year before getting the boot.
If Kelly can’t win double digit games next year he should fire himself. Even if Kizer enters the draft we should still be a very good team with a bunch of starters coming back. He needs to knock this DC hire out the park. It has to be the right guy. By right I mean a great recruiter and a good teacher. If he picks the wrong guy it could end up costing him his job.
I really really really need to be praying harder that Kizer returns.
Who is calling plays, Denbrock? BK isn’t even wearing a headset these days.
Sorry meant to reply to your message below re: playcalling
Denbrock is calling plays.
If BK is going to go after next season, I would much prefer that he go now (at this point, there are 7 seasons of data points to show what we can expect to see). It seems like when you wait a year for an inevitable firing, then (1) nothing much changes in that extra year (performance wise), and (2) recruiting typically takes a dive. Recruiting is in decent shape right now, so if Jack is going to make a change, make it this year so that the next coach is in a good position.
One concern is that this year is a bad year for a head coach search – LSU, Texas, USC, and Auburn are all more attractive options for coaches. Mandel on Foxsports admitted this in last week’s mailbag.
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Also what was the point in bringing in Sanford if you wasn’t going to let him call plays? He is one of the best young offensive coaches in the country. We are 2-4 and there is nothing to lose at this stage. Let’s see what Sanford can do before some program comes and steals him away.
Well Kelly had to because Martin was garbage, but I posit that he’s never been happy with it. At the heart of things, Kelly’s a good MAC coach with a huge ego.
Kelly deserves to be fired, but it might make sense to wait a year. But we should ask the question: who will be on the hot seat next year? If another three major programs will be in the same situation, it may not make sense to wait.
Serious question – you think there’s any chance ND would make a move on Les?
Great gif work
I remember watching the practice vids leading up to Clemson last year. The extent of wet weather prep was gently sprinkling the football from a water bottle. I bet it was the same this year
I’ve seen enough.
This Tenn and A&M game is insane.
A soundtrack suggestion: https://youtu.be/n8CzFVm1Yio
Don’t go browsing the internet looking for ND talk. I went down a dark tunnel somewhere. Sheesh, no debate about what those people think of BK. Yikes.
A few thoughts:
1) I went to the game and left in the middle of the 2nd quarter. That’s one of the best decisions I’ll make all year.
2) They should *not* have played that game today. Full stop. This is a failure of the ND and NC State administrations. They got insanely lucky nobody tore up their knee(s).
3) Props to the NC State student section. They were amped up.
4) That was awful, indefensible, stubborn playcalling. Of course, Kelly defended it and saw no issues. Sure dude.
5) Brian Kelly is also a dead coach walking. He will not be Notre Dame’s coach for the 2018 season. To that end, if he is fired this year (or this week), that’s fine by me. There is never a great time to hire a coach, so might as well make it soon as possible.
6) The “but who are we gonna hire?” counterargument is not nearly as sophisticated as its proponents think. ND Football has standards. Brian Kelly has not met those standards, and has been given plenty of rope to do so (both in terms of time and getting almost anything he has asked for in terms of changes to gameday, turf, etc.). For ND to give indications that they remain happy with Brian Kelly is an indication that the standards are much, much lower than I thought they were and I think should be.
/hires Bob Davie again
The point with Kelly is you know what you have. And what you have is not ok. Adding some chance of another Davie is well worth the risk.
“Who are we going to hire?” doesn’t mean someone thinks Kelly’s performance is “ok.” But we’ve seen much worse–3x in a row. Sure, okay, fine–if you’re going to dump him, do it now instead of next year. Because while this year we’re 12th in line for a good coach behind the LSU’s, Texas’s, USCs, etc. next year we might be 13th. Eff it, let’s just burn it all down.
BK may truly be “not ok”, but taking a risk of another Davie? or Willingham? or Weis? That just isn’t a smart move. Even Holtz had his struggles. Until the year that never happened ’94 was a really, really bad year…not surprisingly, like the ’16 NFL draft, the ’94 draft saw a lot of Irish names called.
This sucks. Really, really sucks. But BK is simply not as bad as any of the three before him, not by a long shot.
I think you misinterpret my comment – if you’re asking whether I’d take Davie or Kelly, of course I would take Kelly. But that’s not the relevant question.
My point is that a coaching search does inevitably run the risk of a total dud like Davie (as opposed to a mostly-but-clearly-not-total dud like Kelly… BK is more like a 5/7 dud), and I acknowledge that risk may be even higher than usual of getting a Davie type this year given that, at minimum, the LSU and Texas jobs (and USC if it comes open) would be unambiguously more attractive to a coach, all other things being equal.
But the year-to-year shift on whether we’re likely to hit a home run hire isn’t going to change for us significantly. There’s no obvious ND potential-future-head-coach out there like Michigan had with Harbaugh or Miles that would make timing the firing worthwhile. So we are almost assuredly going to be picking among unsure things, whether it be now or next year. Might as well shoot our shot now, even if the competition makes it marginally less likely that we’re going to make a good hire.
And yet, an entire year brings a lot of uncertainty. Next year at this time there could be one or more home run candidates. This year seems like the chance of landing such a coach would be zero. So, since we can do much, much worse than BK pulling the trigger now would be more risky than waiting.
We’ll be talking of BK’s dismissal until it happens.(this year, next year?) O’Malley at TOS said the Duke game was the beginning of the end. I think he was right.
@Well, at least we’re not Rutgers.@
That’s another thing that makes me sick about all this. Not only does Michigan not deserve nice things, Harbaugh is a legitimately just bizarre human being. And we have to sit here watching them be an effing wrecking ball, while we can’t handle Duke and NC State.
Having to see Michigan luck into Harbaugh because the 49ers are morons, while Alabama and Ohio State lucked into stud coaches because they lied to their last employer and faked a heart attack to get out of a bad situation (respectively), to say nothing of the fact that OSU’s vacancy only existed because of flagrant NCAA rule breaking, makes me wonder why I even bother. Clearly the only answer is to mismanage the program into oblivion – which, hey, we’re doing! Where’s our top 5 coach?
Maybe you should take a deep breath?
Oh hell this FSU-Miami game is crazy.
@I can only imagine what this undefeated Stanford team will do to us. What ??!! WHAT ????!!!!@
If we lose to Stanford and Miami, does Swarbrick pull the trigger? Can he even pull the trigger? Who would be the interim coach?
As much as I was pushing the “we should fire him soon” line above, there is no real chance they will fire him in-season. My sense is that Swarbrick actually quite likes Kelly, and I suspect it will take a strong suggestion from outside pressure (e.g., the Board of Trustees) to get him to make a move this year. I do think that push may well happen, though, especially if we spit the bit this week ahead of a BoT meeting.
Can we really not compete with the big boys in a coaching search? We just raised/spent half a billion–that’s billion with a “b”–clams on our stadium. Couple mill a year’s just a drop in the bucket to put a better on field product inside said new stadium. And we dont have to compete with a state school that has to worry about waste of taxpayer resources and other, better performing in state rivals draining the public fisc.
Can? Sure, we can. Will we? Probably not. Hell, wasn’t Weis the first coach who made more than the University President? That was a rule at least through Lou, that the football coach couldn’t be the highest paid University employee. Obviously that’s out the window now, but I don’t see us throwing 7 million at Tom Herman. I definitely see LSU and Texas doing so, because they’ve got boosters who will foot the bill. Yes, we’ve got big money boosters, but I don’t know if we have any sugar daddies quite that committed, or if the University would allow it.
Why would we want Tom Herman? That guy can’t beat Navy either!
Herman’s only two losses are to Navy and Bob Diaco. Hmm….
No, I don’t think we can compete with them, but least of all because of money. The risk at ND is too high for a bona-fide great coach to come here, especially after seeing how Kelly has fared. I think the Herman’s of the world will connect the dots of Urban declining ND and going on to further greatness, vs Kelly accepting and getting ground up by our approach to football vs fan expectations.
It’s such a colossal bummer that top flight coaches aren’t wanting the challenge of ND. Maybe it’s the smart play for them, but I can’t help but think, yeah, if you win titles at LSU and Texas, you won titles at LSU and Texas. If you win one at ND, you are basically a god. Maybe we’ll get really lucky and some stud will want that challenge. I really hope someone who’s ready for that challenge does.