UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

Rather than being a hands down all around great coach, he is great at certain things. Looking back he has been great at "cobbling together" really good teams and undefeated seasons.

2012 and 2018 weren't great teams and there were weaknesses that he adjusted to practically on the fly. In 2012 he used Rees effectively when Golson struggled. And he plugged holes with players like Russell. In 2018 he made the critical switch to Book and put other pieces in place as he went along.

This year I think he stuck with Book and the WR group while they got their feet under them. It would have been easy to try to plug in guys like Johnson because things weren't clicking early on. He also came up with a successful formula at RB and in the secondary. He figured out a way to survive while the offense was coming around.

Add to that the fact that he (or his staff) have been very good at evaluating and developing talent. His evolution after 2016 is also noteworthy.

So rather than wringing my hands about how 2012 and 2013 weren't dominant teams ready to take on Alabama, I'm leaning more towards appreciating what he was able to accomplish with teams that (in hindsight) just weren't championship caliber teams.

Seems like maybe this is what this is what a great coach needs to do. Figure out a way to overachieve until that results in consecutive highly ranked recruiting classes and MAYBE lucking into a generational talent like Deshaun Watson. Along the way you build around your areas of strength like the O-line and D-line.