As camp enters the stretch run, it’s time to get serious about kicking our glue-sniffing habit.
Wait, wrong post, sorry… It’s time to get serious about our staff’s season predictions for the Notre Dame football in 2017. Personally, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more anxious for a season to start; the memory of 2016 will not soon fade, but Lieber Gott im Himmel have I wanted to try to flush it from my mind anyway. We should handle Temple easily, with some guys looking great and some guys looking rusty, and glide through the fourth quarter with some good playing time for the scrubs. If that doesn’t happen, well, go ahead and make plans for your other fall Saturdays. If it does, it won’t say much about where the season is headed but it will at least give us something tangible to be happy about for a few days. Whee!
We’ve seen so many changes this offseason, from Kelly’s new yoga-riffic daily routine to three new coordinators (and five new assistants overall) to a new starting quarterback. What can we make of all that?
That’s right folks, it’s preseason! You can make anything you want out of it! Semi-spoiler alert: Some of us made hats, some made brooches, and some made pterodactyls. I’m not telling you who made what, though. The suspense!
Seriously, we put our heads together on a bunch of real questions – and a couple of tongue-in-cheek ones, because if we haven’t got our irreverence, we haven’t got anything – to give you, our noble readers, some insight into our thoughts on the upcoming season.
At the end of the post, we’ll have a link to the same survey we filled out so you can add your own responses. We’ll circle back to the numbers after it’s been up for a bit and enough people have had a chance to check it out.
Without further ado…
The 18Stripes Staff Season Predictions
Big Picture Stuff
What will Notre Dame’s 2017 regular season record be?
- 8-4 – 50%
- 10-2 – 17%
- 9-3 – 17%
- 12-0/11-1 – 8%
- 7-5 – 8%
- 6-6 or worse – 0%
So most of us are expecting 8-4 or 7-5, while the rest are expecting 9-3 or better. That feels about right, given that Vegas has set the O/U on our win total at 7.5.
Of course, there’s an implied discussion here of what the impact of one of the lower scenarios would be on Kelly’s continued employment. That’s so fuzzy that it really defies definition at this point, but my hunch is that 8-4 will probably be enough to keep him around for one more year, 6-6 will almost certainly get him canned, and 7-5 is an exceedingly grey area.
Security camera footage of Brian Kelly’s exit interview after 6-6
What’s your biggest concern heading into the season?
- Defensive line depth chart – 67%
- 2016 hangover – 17%
- Defensive fundamentals – 8%
- Finishing games – 8%
We gave a bunch of other options, ranging from Brian Kelly himself to safety depth to Wimbush’s essential rookie status, but none of those registered with the group. The overwhelming winner was, understandably, the defensive line depth chart; new defensive coordinator Mike Elko will need some magic to sort that one out.
Superlatives
Who will be Notre Dame’s offensive MVP?
- Josh Adams – 33%
- Equanimeous St. Brown – 33%
- Brandon Wimbush – 25%
- Mike McGlinchey – 8%
Pretty divided here, which makes sense given that all the candidates have shown flashes of brilliant potential but not enough to assure dominance. And who knows, if the defense is as shaky as some fear it will be, we may need multiple MVP-caliber seasons from this group to put together a good year.
We know the actual line is “I just want to tell you both good luck,” but the transcript error here works for the context. Artistic Googling license.
Who will be Notre Dame’s defensive MVP?
- Nyles Morgan – 67%
- Daelin Hayes – 17%
- Drue Tranquill – 8%
- Julian Love – 8%
Heady stuff for true sophomore Julian Love, making an appearance on this list… Make no mistake, though, senior captain Nyles Morgan is the unquestioned alpha dog of this group. After languishing needlessly in former coordinator Rube Goldberg’s Brian VanGorder’s system, the uber-athlete is poised to excel in Elko’s. The 18Stripes staff is clearly along for the ride. I bet it would be really easy to pick out Morgan’s wallet in a bag full of wallets from a diner robbery. Just saying.
Who will provide the play of the year?
- Brandon Wimbush – 33%
- Alize Mack – 25%
- Equanimeous St. Brown – 17%
- CJ Sanders (as a kick returner) – 17%
- Josh Adams – 8%
What jumps out to me a bit here is the conspicuous absence of any defenders, and the strong showing by the relatively inexperienced Alize Mack. He’s an exceptional physical talent and Irish fans have waited for him to break out forever, seemingly. Will his third year be the charm?
Alize Mack barreling through USC’s defense
Which freshman will have the biggest immediate impact?
- Brock Wright – 42%
- Isaiah Robertson – 42%
- Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa – 8%
- Kurt Hinish – 8%
Not surprisingly, two guys at the thinnest position on the team made this list in MTA and Hinish. They may not be ready but the void must be filled, so not a bad choice in either case. Both were write-in choices; Darnell Ewell was an option, but early camp reports on conditioning made investors skittish. Meanwhile, the two early-enrollees who have college-ready physiques dominated the answers. Weird, huh?
Over/Under Fun
Wins in first 6 games: 5
58% took the over, 42% the under. I almost set this line at 4.5, but I thought, no, let’s make people really make a call. I took the over, as any loyal reader of the site probably would’ve guessed. I could well be wrong about opening 6-0, but if we open even 4-2, given the quality difference in the two halves of our schedule we could be in for a very long season.
The 18S writers’ room after a first-half loss to anyone other than Georgia.
Average team rushing yards in Brian Kelly’s tenure: 2,127
A whopping 92% took the over, while 8% took the under. This surprised me a bit; I know we have a rookie quarterback, a stable of talented running backs, and an offensive line stocked with NFL prospects, but still, I would’ve expected more of an even split here. There’s a bit of a hidden catch as well, as the Irish have beaten this average in only two of Kelly’s seven seasons at the helm. If you guessed those two times were 2012 (2,462) and 2015 (2,703), give yourself a pat on the back. 2011 (2,085) and 2014 (2,073) were very close. 2010, 2013, and 2016, not so much.
Average team passing yards in Brian Kelly’s tenure: 3,272
This was exactly reversed, as 92% took the under and 8% took the over. Flipping the script, only two of Kelly’s seven seasons have actually been under this number; if you guessed 2012 and 2015 again, shove a sharp stick in one eye because you’re half right.  (NB: Don’t really do that.)  The two low seasons were 2012 (2,896) and 2016 (3,051). Despite all that, our crew is bearish on a rookie quarterback’s ability to hit the mark. Or bullish on Chip Long’s stated intention to run the ball more. We’re gonna pound it! For real this time! Honest!
An interesting asterisk to add to this is Chip Long’s recent history.
- 2012 – ASU – Taylor Kelly (new starter), 3,040 yards.
- 2013 – ASU – Taylor Kelly, 3,635 yards
- 2014 – ASU – Taylor Kelly and Mike Bercovici (injury replacement), 3,559 yards
- 2015 – ASU – Â Mike Bercovici, 3,854 yards
- 2016 – Memphis – Riley Ferguson (new starter), 3,698 yards
Long was only calling plays in Memphis, but his immediate supervisor was Mike Norvell that entire time; it’s reasonable to suspect a stylistic trend might continue. The question might really be whose average will prove more prophetic – Kelly’s or Long’s.
Average team sacks in Brian Kelly’s tenure: 24
Average team tackles for loss in Brian Kelly’s tenure: 70
Average team interceptions in Brian Kelly’s tenure: 12.6
In Elko We Trust.â„¢ For the first two metrics our staff voted the same, as 58% took the over on each. For the interceptions, we were even more convinced that Elko would increase disruption, with 67% taking the over.
An interesting picture begins to emerge here. A majority of our writers thinks our season record will be uninspiring at best (remember, 58% picked 8-4 or 7-5), yet a majority also thinks we’ll run the ball very well and be more disruptive on defense. I would think there would be very little overlap there, which could mean either that people thought differently about the different questions or that some people expect some really weird sh… stuff to happen. Which seems totally out of bounds, since we never seem beset by weird stuff.
Josh Adams rushing yards: 1,100
This was split down the middle, with 50% taking each side. Adams had 933 yards last year; the best season rusher under Kelly was Cierre Wood in 2011 (1,102), followed closely by CJ Prosise in 2015 (1,029).
Equanimeous St. Brown receiving yards: 1,000
Again a 50/50 split, which is interesting considering EQ had 961 yards last year and will enter his junior season as the clear alpha dog at receiver. The best individual season under Kelly was, not surprisingly, Will Fuller in 2015 (1,258).
Brandon Wimbush rushing yards: 400
The staff was more bearish on this one, with 58% taking the under. With so much of the offense’s success riding on Wimbush’s health and enough to manage in his first season as a starter without scrambling all over the place, it would be a bit surprising to see him run extensively. The best individual season under Kelly was Deshone Kizer in 2015 (520), followed closely by 14’s 2016 effort (472). No other Kelly quarterback has cracked 300 yards at Notre Dame.
Nyles Morgan tackles: 110
I was a little surprised that 75% of the staff took the under here, as Morgan seems poised for a breakout year and his spiritual predecessors at Notre Dame, Jaylon Smith and Manti Te’o, logged a combined five seasons above this mark under Kelly. This could be a classic case of evaluating production over potential, though; Morgan has only 154 tackles total through his first three mostly discombobulated seasons. Who was running that defense again?
Live footage of Brian VanGorder adapting his scheme to his players
Daelin Hayes sacks: 8.5
67% took the under here to just 33% for the over. The best individual season under Kelly was Stephon Tuitt in 2012 (11), followed by Romeo Okwara in 2015 (9). Yes, disturbingly, only once in Kelly’s seven seasons has a defender registered double digits in sacks. Diaco’s system wasn’t designed for it, which I get, but you’d think a guy would stumble into a few every once in a while.
Defensive and special teams touchdowns: 4.5
The average Notre Dame season under Kelly has featured 4.3 non-offense scores, hence the line here. We’re bullish on this one, with 67% taking the over. Man, Elko has people sipping the Kool-Aid big time.
Possessions vs. Navy: 10.5
Once again, this is a very purposefully set line, as our average number of possessions against Navy in Kelly’s tenure is 10.3. Unbeknownst to them, perhaps, our staff expects big things from the Irish against the Middies this year, as I didn’t tell them about this next stat until after the voting: Under Kelly, when we’ve had 11 or more possessions against Navy, we’re 4-0 with an average margin of +27.3. When we’ve had 10 or fewer possessions, we’re 1-2 with an average margin of -5. That’s pretty convincing.
Navy’s experience when Notre Dame gets 11+ possessions
Occurrences of “grit” in press conference comments: 50
58% took the over here, 42% the under. Given that Kelly said “grit” four or five times in the first post-practice presser, I think the unders are going to lose some cash on this one.
Dreaded Votes of Confidence handed out by Jack Swarbrick: 1.5
67% took the under, 33% the over. I took the under myself, but I don’t think it’ll be zero; I expect that at least once during this year Swarbrick is going to be asked if he has confidence in Kelly and he’ll have to say yes. Even if he means no, because that’s how PR works and WHY DO I STILL HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS?
Observer ads taken out by disgruntled alumni: 0.5
We’re split evenly on this one. Those zany disgruntled alumni, always up to hijinx and tomfoolery… Hopefully the guy who designed last year’s Observer ad will stay in the focus group this time, instead of the design committee. Or least upgrade from PowerPoint 97 to 2013. Please.
Prop Bets
Which coordinator will have the biggest impact in 2017?
No offense to Chip Long, but 100% of the respondents chose Mike Elko. I didn’t include new special teams coordinator Brian Polian in the options, but I highly doubt the voting would’ve gone any differently anyway. No offense to PunterBro. Like I said, In Elko We Trust.â„¢
Who will start at free safety against Temple?
92% said Nick Coleman, while 8% took the field. Coleman rose from the ashes of a disastrous 2016 season at corner to seize control of the #1 free safety spot in the spring, a development that literally nobody saw coming. I’ll bet even Nick Coleman’s mother didn’t see it coming. That’s how crazy it was.
Who will start at free safety against Stanford?
67% said Nick Coleman, while 33% took the field. It seems Nick hasn’t quite dragged a few people onto his hype train yet. Don’t worry, there’s still time folks. And if you don’t ever want to get on board? Nick has a message for you.
Who will lead the team in touchdowns?
75% chose Josh Adams, while 25% chose the field. The presumed workhorse back seems like a natural choice, given a healthy season.
Who will lead the team in sacks?
58% chose Daelin Hayes, while 42% chose the field. The most prominent non-Daelin candidates are Nyles Morgan and Drue Tranquill; last year, their Wake Forest counterparts were second and third on their team, respectively. However, in each of the last seven seasons, a defensive lineman was Elko’s leading sack man. Seems a wise bet to assume that will continue.
Who will lead the team in interceptions?
Poor Julian Love… Only 8% took the proffered Julian while 92% took the field. I chose Love due to his heady play last year and a lack of proven playmakers elsewhere in the secondary. We saw an interesting dynamic unfold in the secondary during fall camp, though; Nick Watkins, Donte Vaughn, and Shaun Crawford have all played at a high level. Watkins could be rusty, Crawford will always be a health risk, and Vaughn is still a sophomore, but still… That significantly clouds Love’s outlook at corner this season. He’s too good a player not too see the field, but if all those guys are rolling, so are they. Love’s performance at safety against Army last year had many wondering about a potential future there; if he can’t break through the corner logjam, that future might come sooner than we thought.
Your Turn!
We invite you to view the survey yourself here and submit your own responses. As promised, we’ll revisit the data in a couple of weeks to make sure people have had a chance to check it out. Click and enjoy.
Well? We’re waiting!!!
I really wanted to use the Judge Smails gif here, but it would be a shame to put together a nearly complete Airplane! theme and then throw in a Caddyshack gif at the end. So I encourage you to enjoy this final gif, but hear Smails’s voice over it. You’ll be better for it, I promise.
Great post. Great movie.
Y’all been drinking this early in the morning?
There’s never a bad time to drink for Irish fans. Rookie.
I think 8-4 plus a bowl WIN will save Kelly’s job for another season. Anything less is questionable.
Safety depth was my biggest concern. I just dont think we have enough players there with enough talent to compete with our schedule. God help us if any of our starters go down.
I’m a little more concerned about center. Safety is number two for sure, but if Mustipher goes down Ruhland hasn’t got much practice snapping the ball. He could surprise me though.
Forgot who in the beat mentioned it a while ago–although this was before fall camp–they expect Bars to be the backup center. That could change if Ruhland had a great camp but I doubt it.
Just wanted to check in and see how Leon is doing?
As we feared, he’s getting l-a-a-a-a-a-a-rger…
Well played
Love the Movie. Nervous about the Season.
I think safety depth is the greatest concern. My choice for best freshman is Cole Kmet.
Not a bad choice at all – Kmet has really come on strong. Based on practice reports I could be convinced that he’ll move ahead of Brock Wright at some point this year, maybe even by Temple, which I never would’ve predicted on signing day. I voted for Ewell, by the way, but that was before camp started.
Fantastic article! BTW, I checked in over at TOS because I was bored. To save you guys some time, I will summarize the posts below:
~ I am outraged!
~~ I am more outraged!
~~~ your outrage pales in comparison with my outrage *nfm
~~ only outraged? Kelly Lover!
~~ I will never attend another game ever
~~~ all that beautiful pavement torn up for a lousy BUILDING!
~~~~ I’m no architect, but if I was I wouldn’t design that kind of building
~~ The penalty for the cheating scandal wasn’t enough!
~~~ the NCAA should make us vacate all wins post-Holtz!!!
~~ Just got an email. Those clowns in the ticket office are trying to sell tickets
~~~ they are so desperate!
~~~~ it’s outrageous!!!
edit: aaaaack! I lost the indentations. Oh well, you get the idea
Thanks! And on the formatting point, yeah, aside from line breaks formatting isn’t preserved when you post the comment. It’s, uh, somewhere on the feature roadmap for 18S. Somewhere.
Seems like another Wednesday over there. The stuff that really kills me is the support for the NCAA sanctions – the infractions committee THAT IS LED BY THE SEC COMMISSIONER wants us to vacate 21 wins because a student trainer typed papers for five kids (likely with some editing, but, um, North Carolina). I would call it a farce, but that would be an insult to farces. Yet the “fire Kelly at all costs” camp is so dedicated to that cause that they’re *siding with the NCAA against Notre Dame* over this. And they call Boston College “Fredo”…
Technically UNC students didn’t cheat. All those students did exactly what was required of them by the university, which was nothing. Technically some of them may have managed to get someone else to do the nothing for them, but it’s hard to generate evidence of someone doing nothing.
Yeah, that’s what the NCAA is leaning on. It’s a pretty nice blueprint for others – it can’t be that egregious, because UNC’s accreditation was on the line at one point and no school would value its athletic department enough to risk that – but… Just make a very easy set of courses and open them to all students, and voila. Instant, sanction-proof eligibility mill.
The NCAA has enough room for interpretation in its by-laws that it could’ve dropped the hammer on UNC, especially since the investigation firmly concluded that coaches from multiple sports knew about the classes and coordinated enrollments for at-risk students. They chose the path of “it’s really a university issue, not an athletics issue,” though, so they didn’t have to kill a blue blood program. Exemplary character, them.
Honestly, I’m OK with this. I am a firm believer that athletes shouldn’t have to go to college to continue playing their sport and try to become a professional. Unfortunately, college is their only option in football, and sort of basketball right now.
However, I am very glad that UNC’s accreditation is/was on the line. I had never heard that it was until now, and was outraged by that. So, thank you. That issue went way beyond sports and I hope that USNWR or anyone else who ranks universities dinged them for it.
This is the type of behavior I would expect and am fine seeing for schools outside the top 100 academically. There is so much money on the line, and these are football coaches, not teachers who happen to be coaching. Their families rely on them winning games. However, I was appalled seeing it at such a good school (UNC #30 in USNWR). There are so many much more legit ways to do this, just ask Michigan.
PS in looking up UNC, I noticed that ND is now tied for 15 w/ Vandy Rice and Cornell! Last I checked we were ONLY a measly 18. Movin on up.
I just don’t think that ND as an institution, or the coach, or AD, or FB program did anything wrong. Several players and one of their girlfriends did. It is simply absurd to vacate wins in such circumstances.
The NCAA’s stance is that as an “institutional staff member” (technical NCAA term) she should’ve been subject to more oversight. Short of having players wear body cameras or vetting all their assignments for consistency of style, though, I’m not sure what they really could’ve done to prevent this; the NCAA also concluded that there was no lack of control. Seems kind of contradictory, no?
ND also took issue with the committee defining the trainer as an institutional staff member, at least in the same sense as the institutional staff members at fault in all the cases the committee cited as precedent. They all involved either coaches or academic support staff; the NCAA has never before assigned a penalty of vacated wins for a case that didn’t involve lack of institutional control, coaches, or academic support staff.
Feckless. Probably cost us any chance of maintaining the win percentage record ahead of Michigan for about 15-20 years or so, if all goes well. And there are ND fans siding with these guys.
Yeah, when I saw that thread I nearly threw up. That dude should be ashamed of himself. Just a despicable, loathsome, pathetic…(well, you get the idea).
Honestly, I would love to see ND say no, we will not vacate any wins based on this issue. We don’t care what the appeals process decides. We have decided. K? Thanks, bye.
Unfortunately, everyone else will choose to “count” those wins as vacated, whether or not we agree.
The thing that sticks with me is that the reason that the NCAA says that the games have to be vacated is that Notre Dame retroactively lowered the kids’ grades for cheating, to the point where they were academically ineligible by NCAA standards. i can’t imagine any other university — ANY other — that would do that in the first place. If the appeal is denied, it will be interesting to see if the courts get involved.
Hey, actually, thanks! Life is too short too spend much time on TOS, at least the “commentaries” part; I guess every now and then there are some useful threads but talk about much sifting of chaff for like, milligrams of wheat… but it’s useful to know what some of our fellow interested parties in Notre Dame football are talking about. A true shame, sucgh a waste. We need everyone to get in the stadium and make… More Noise… and try to help the kids. At least that is the way I see it. BTW, the jumbotron guys are shaping it up to be a genuine celebration of the best of us. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
“I bet it would be really easy to pick out Morgan’s wallet in a bag full of wallets from a diner robbery. Just saying.”
A circumlocutory tour de force. Well done, sir, well done indeed. 🙂
Thanks man! Besides the Airplane! theme and the Caddyshack callout, I snuck a couple of other pop culture references in there and see if anybody would catch them. That’s one – the other is a subtler reference to The Princess Bride, specifically to Count Rugen. Let the hunt begin!
“if we haven’t got our irreverence, we haven’t got anything”
Someday, we might go as high as 5, but for now, let’s work with what we have.
Well done!
OK, I confess. I have no idea what the reference is. to I have I confess been over here drinking Chateau Lafitte and checking out the incredible scenery of Parisennes strolling down… whoops sorry! Anyway, I flunk the culture test. But if you have pity on me and tell me the reference, I would be surely grateful!
TGTS nailed it. Before going down to the Pit of Despair to torture Wesley, Count Rugen unironically tells Prince Humperdinck to “Get some rest. After all, if you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.”
It’s one of the many wonderful bits of absurdity from that movie.
I predict that BK will never learn that sometimes it’s just better to STFU – http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2726550
What in it was egregious?
I think the headline grabber, which he should have known the internets would run with, is creating yet another excuse with the fundraising thing. Given that the media rap on him is that he creates excuses, he should probably stop listing excuses. Even if it happens to be based in reality.
What bothers me more, though, is this:
“I don’t know Jack’s reasoning for it,” Kelly says. “He gets hit more than I do. He’s getting hit by guys that have big pockets. My reaction was, Really? You need to say something? If you’ve got to start defending football coaches after he takes a team to the (BCS) national championship game and a step away from being in the playoffs over the last four years, it’s going to be a rough run for you here after being vacant here for 20 years.”
BK thinks he’s doing a great job! That’s nuts. He’s doing a “barely didn’t get fired despite having signed a 6-year contract extension within the last year” job. He is on one of the hottest seats in the country. I’m not expecting him to explicitly say he understands that it would be reasonable for him to have been fired last year (that would be a correct but counterproductive statement), but he could instead just say something like “any time you have a very poor season at Notre Dame, people will be asking about the coach” and move on.
I think he is clearly creating a narrative. Last year was bad because I had to take my focus away from the team. This year is different.
If things work out and we get 10 wins, he’ll be able to say, “see, I fixed things”. If we head into the can with fewer than 8 wins, it won’t matter anyway. He’ll be canned, but still may be able to trot that narrative out again in interviews. ‘I tried to fix it, but they still made me do all this other stuff.”
A charitable view would be that he is saying this maybe to give players more confidence in the coming year (‘I have all the answers”). Maybe recruits, too.
A less charitable view is that it is all about BK and his ego.
He probably half thinks it’s the former, but it is probably mostly the latter in reality.
I thought he made a great point about taking them to the BCS and being one field goal away from the playoffs. If ND fires him after one bad season, what coach are they going to get after that? Only the desperate coaches would take that job.
That’s one way to spin it, but the reality is that it would be firing him after an eh first season, a bad second season, a very very good to arguably great third season, not-good fourth and fifth seasons, a sixth season that was no better than the second season was bad, and then a disaster of a season. Based on the track record, that would be a reasonable firing candidate – it’s not clear cut, but it’s not like it would be absurd to fire him after that, and it is certainly not the case that he has done as good as a job as his quote would indicate.
I think that what clouds the issue is that you can find reasonable explanations for everything before 2016. His first two years were getting the program running the way he wanted it, like any new coach, and then the third was when everything came together. In 2013, Golson screwed everything up by getting suspended – winning 8 games with a full season of TFR as QB1 took some work. In 2014, we had a new DC and had an absurd number of injuries in the second half of the season, to the point that Greer Martini played some DT against USC. In 2015, we had a good year by any measure; disappointing, especially in that we lost to the three best teams on the schedule, but 10-3 is a decent year anywhere.
Now, the flip side of that is that if you need explanations for four out of six years, maybe there’s something systemic there. And of course there was no explanation for 2016, which was a failure of epic proportions across the board. And yet he had 2012 and 2015. This is the crux of the issue with Kelly – he’s clearly not as good as our good coaches, and he’s clearly not as bad as our bad coaches. He’s the only guy in the pretty wide bap between Terry Brennan and Dan Devine in win percentage. Even before 4-8, he was below Devine.
That in turn lends itself to the “who can we get who would be an improvement.” With Weis, Willingham, and Davie, that question wasn’t such a big deal – they were so clearly bad that the risk element of a new hire was significantly lessened. We could be pretty confident that the floor of whoever we hired would be no worse than their floor, at least. That’s not so easy with Kelly. I’m not saying he deserved to be kept necessarily, I’m saying that you can make a reasonable case for either side. You couldn’t make a reasonable case for Bob Weisingham to be kept, so that decision was clear. Even if he’s fired after 8-4 this year (which I don’t think will happen, btw, regardless of Sampson’s thoughts), you better believe that part of the national media and coaching fraternity narrative will be that you can’t win at ND anymore. Dark times indeed. It won’t solve everything in a year, but I really hope we can pull off 10-2 just to calm a lot of that down for another year.
Right. So clearly the past twenty plus years have shown us that winning consistently at ND is more difficult than at a lot of other schools. It seems pretty clear to me anyway. So potential hires for the head coaching position have to see it this way too. All of this, is to say that if you fire the most successful coach in the past twenty years, in spite of all of the built in difficulties of coaching at ND, you are sending a message to future hires.
That’s the point I got from BK’s statement. I think there is some legitimacy to it.
I think his comment there was ill-advised. I can see how he would bristle at the thought of needing a DVOC, but at the same time a bit more humility (or, if you prefer, a bit less hubris) would’ve served him well there.
On the upside, that quote shows me that BFUK is alive and well, and BFUK is typically the best BK. So there’s that.
Yeah, not the best phrasing.
Yes.
I’ve said before that I’m sort of blindly optimistic about this season, but I think the majority of that belief is that BK is at his best when his back’s against the wall (see GVSU after 1999, ND 2012, ND 2015).
He knows he has to win his way off the hot seat and every change he made over the off season seems to be for the better (jury out on Chip Long). I’m buying ND stock this season. 9-3.
You speak a lot of truth to this. I want to see Kelly go, but part of me is scared that the administration will *redacted* up the hiring process AGAIN and we end up with another Bob Weisingham. I don’t want us to get WORSE just because Kelly isnt Lou or Ara
I agree except they woulda kept us out even if we beat Stanford. Also that game triggers me. We could peel off ten yard runs at will… then we lost.
Goddammit I knew that stupid stadium project was a major problem. The focus was on fundraising for this giant, weird amalgamation of football and education facilities (believe me, I got an annoyingly amount of phone calls about buying a box seat in the new stadium from people who clearly think I’m in higher tax bracket than I really am), to the point where Kelly was an absentee coach. Indications of this came out even before today: he admitted that he didn’t know all the players’ names last year, Longo wasn’t supervising workouts, and the sheer fact that the defense was an absolutely appalling mess. I’m not against a stadium renovation, but the way this was done, attaching a massive building to the stadium with an attendingly massive cost, the fundraising of which took up so much of the AD and head coach’s time that they didn’t notice the disasterous direction the football program was going in.
It wasn’t fundraising for Crossroads, though, it was fundraising for the Gug renovation and the new practice facility. I would also venture to guess that “fundraising” is code for “spending time with boosters who want/need to feel important.”
That doesn’t take anything away from the fact that it’s stupid that this was any kind of contributing factor to last year, of course. Just don’t blame it on Crossroads. 🙂
Doing some reading before the season (mostly Bill Connelly team previews). A couple of interesting data points.
Talent rankings of current rosters (247 is amazing!). We’re at #10:
http://247sports.com/Season/2016-Football/CollegeTeamTalentComposite
Brian Kelly’s surprisingly good position on this ranking of coaching’s overachievers (It does include his time at Cincinnati, but it reminds us he did some good work before he got the job):
https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2016/7/15/12200790/second-order-wins-college-football-pat-fitzgerald-kevin-wilson?_ga=2.164987647.1748844404.1502813554-29403151.1502813554
Lastly, when Pete Sampson visited the local club, he said Kelly needed nine wins to save his job (presumably that includes a bowl win? I wasn’t there). My own prediction is 7-5 and Jack Swarbrick suffers a great deal. I appreciate Kelly making so many changes, but if you have to “figure it out” in your seventh year at a school (plus all his years of coaching before), it’s hard for me to be optimistic. But, again, we’re a top 10 talent team, so good things could happen even against this tough schedule. Go Irish!
One caveat on the overachiever rankings – they’re from July of last year, and his second order win differential last season was -3.2. That’s one of the worst since Connelly started tracking S&P. If you factor it in, he would drop from 30th on that list to 67th. Obviously other guys had different seasons last year too that would have moved them up and down, so that 67th ranking likely isn’t entirely accurate, but it gets the point across. We’ll see this year if it’s an anomaly or if he went Steve Blass on us.
I love the changes made in the offseason. I think Elko is possibly a top five DC in college football and I think Chip Long is probably pretty good too, although he has less on his resume than Elko. Bringing in Polian as a full-time ST coordinator was fantastic. Balis looks like a great hire. It’s a lot to come together in one offseason, but if it actually works, I think we could not just have a big year but be set up for a run – just look at how Elko is recruiting defensive talent already. If it doesn’t work, well, time to clean out the offices.
Fascinating discussion above. Some thoughts for what they are worth (not much):
1, Concur interview not too bad but he coulda kept his mouth shutter; interesting that this probably reflects the real BK, and maybe it’s true, that is not all bad.
2, From the leadership/management perspective, I gotta concur with Brandan’s love for the changes. Not just in themselves, but that they are so sweeping that in effect BK was disowning himself. That means he knows he is in a crisis mode, and he has gone all in. Which is another good sign.
3, Rests that he allowed matters to slip so badly that he had to make all these changes. Bad, bad, bad… and yet, 2015 did mask a lot. And speaking of injuries, remember the huge and sad amount of them we had in 2015? And how despite the BVG sucking chest wound we were really close until the last 30 seconds in Palo Alto? A bit of fool’s gold, but if you want to know why the French and British got their asses kicked in 1940, a lot comes back to that they won big in 1918 (granted, with a lot of us at their sides, but it was them that had all the new tanks, planes, cannons..) Winning can sometimes obscure underlying problems. Mike McGlinchey had a good quote about that at the end of spring ball.
4, Which is to say, you often learn more from losing than winning. I remember Ara telling Dad that he didn’t even remember most of the wins, but he remembered every… single… damn… loss. (And he did have a hard time beating USC!) So, I personally give BK credit for putting it all on the line. And as a fan, I hope that it all works — in fact, gonna fly across the pond for Ga, and So Cal, and even out to Palo Alto. Have faith brothers and sisters!
How about those Rockne unis for the Navy game, though??
Really really like em. Dont LOVE em, but I do love elements of it. Probably a top 3 all time alternate uni though