Those two were historically good players. Players like that are few and far between. You get more of them, of course, when you consistently get the best recruiting classes, like Holtz did in the Cerrato era.
I don’t think Kelly feels STs isn’t an opportunity to put points on the board. I think Neil is correct that he has made a decision to allocate limited resources more to other areas. I think it is reasonable. You said it yourself: ST scores don’t happen often. Far fewer kick return TDs happen than offense generated
ones. It’s about playing the odds with allocation of limited resources. Back to blackjack: idiots sometimes win not playing the statistically correct way ( get lucky as you put it), but that doesn’t make it smart to do. Big picture, you are better off playing the odds. I’d rather play smart than hope to be “lucky.” Or to switch to your golf analogy: the 40 foot putt is awesome, but you are much better off in the long run if you are routinely attempting six footers as opposed to forty footers.
I don’t disagree about how game changing a big special teams play can be. You say, though, that you’ve watched “so many games” in which a team methodically marches for a TD only to see it erased by a KO return. Really? So many? That happens, but much less than other types of scores. And saying other teams simply can’t “prevent STs scores” if you have speed, agility, and good blocking is simply false. Teams prevent that all the time. Even in the Rocket era, he didn’t score on kick returns much more often than he did. And he might have been the best ever.
What is more defeating to an opponent than a kick return for a TD? I’d say a “methodical” TD drive, for one. I think that is “more defeating” usually. KO TDs, being less frequent, are more likely to feel “fluky” than a methodical drive. And less likely to be duplicated. That’s what made Rocket against Michigan so amazing. I’d say stonewalling a team at the goal line is “more defeating” if we want an example on D. Or a pick 6 even.
Bottom line: Agree that ND hasn’t been particularly good on STs, at least KO and punt return, in the Kelly era. Agree that I’d love to see better. Agree that STs can win and lose games. So what are we really talking about here? You think ND should take resources, specifically time resources, away from offense and defense and devote them to special teams. I’ve been persuaded otherwise. We can agree to have different views there. That’s fine. But let’s just not pretend anyone is advocating to completely “ignore” special teams, or that anyone claims that special teams are “not important at all.” That’s where this spins out of control. Nobody says that. The people you are poking at only say STs has much less impact on overall outcomes than offense and defense do, so devoting considerably less time to STs is a reasonable and rational approach.
Hope I haven’t come off as a prick here. I had been out of the country for work recently and am now at home with some time off + my wife is on a trip with her sister. So I’ve been at home drinking and posting more than usual. Probably have been a little more aggressive than I’d like the last few days. Don’t mean anything by it. At the end of the day, we’re all Irish fans. Right? I’m going to sleep now. Have a good night.