A very young and inexperienced team is going to be much better next year if no coaching changes, including BVG, were made. It's now for those who want rid of Kelly or at the earliest 3 years from now. (I believe that the smarter ones among those who despise Kelly, especially his "pass-happy" offense, realize there is a small window of opportunity to "encourage" his dismissal. Thus the maniacal desperation of the message board and "social" media warriors. In reality, because of Swarbrick's professionalism, it's actually a non-existent window. The one hope was that Kelly would stubbornly stick with BVG forcing Swarbrick to make a move. It didn't happen.)
Denbrock is an excellent WR and TE coach. He should be coaching WRs and TEs, not running the offense. (Another hangover from the mythology of the Music City Bowl.) Nor should Mike Sanford. I look at the posts below and once again see the bizarre Sanford adulation. He's the fucking QB coach and with Kelly spending time with the defense the position that scarily regressed was QB. (Boise State's offense continues to be Boise State's offense despite the departure of Sanford because, well, it was never Sanford's offense. It was Brian Hartsin's. As at ND, Sanford was a glorified QB coach.) I think fans have convinced themselves, with the help of the idiot local ND media, into believing that Sanford wants to run the ball -- which ipso facto makes him a great coach in their eyes -- despite Kizer saying last year that if Sanford had his way they'd chuck the ball down the field every down. I don't get it.
With respect to Hiestand, you're conflating developing individual OL skills with coordinating the OL, especially in the running game. Hiestand has a long history of mediocrity in doing the latter, including some horrendous years running the ball. (Last year was the best running game he was a part of and that hardly resulted from the OL dominating the line of scrimmage; in fact, when it was relied upon to do just that it failed.) If you can find any year in his coaching career when Hiestand produced a dominating running game, you're a better researcher than I am. His forte, prior to this year anyway, was protecting the QB. In my opinion, because of his hyped reputation, Hiestand is one of the most problematic members of the staff. If Kelly had the courage to replace him, I would have a lot more confidence in Kelly's remaining tenure at ND.
"He isn't going to be able to attract of DC outside of his coaching tree." Really? The Wake DC e.g. wouldn't consider a guaranteed 3-year, $1 million+ per year contract to coach ad ND? You're better than that. And, as has been pointed out multiple times, Les Miles was on the hot seat when LSU hired Dave Aranda. Miles, if you remember, was about to be fired last November and was saying his goodbyes when the AD was shamed into reneging. Aranda came anyway.
Greg Hudson is not in consideration as permanent DC. He's not. He's currently only DC in name. "I'm pleased to announce that I have hired as DC a man I did not have enough confidence in to give the duties of a DC." Not happening.
The team doesn't need to be transformed. If Kelly had replaced BVG at the end of last year with a sound college DC, despite the excess youth (a consequence itself of recruiting failures and personnel mismanagement on the defensive side) this could have been another 9 or 10 win season. I trust Kelly's ego has been punctured enough that he now realizes he can't manage a mediocre staff to success at ND. I'm hope that Swarbrick has made it clear to Kelly that he must identify the weaknesses in his staff and fix them. And if he refuses -- as Miles refused to make the changes the AD demanded at LSU -- then there might be more than a window of opportunity to remove Kelly. There might be a door with Swarbrick kicking him through it. The firing of BVG suggests otherwise.