In 2011, Brian Kelly was screaming at the veteran players for some silly reason during a locker room tirade, and that's when Kelly made a snide remark towards the veterans that Clem pointed out below this post.

After that, Te'o posted on his media that he would still give it his all, and his best, but that he was now playing for the school and his teammates. He (Te'o) actually kept the team together that way, since there were a lot of other veterans on that team who were equally livid at Kelly.

Some time after that tirade, Brian Kelly gave a "sorry-not sorry" kind of statement, where he asserted that his words were misunderstood.

To put it bluntly, the only players who actually had any love for Brian Kelly, were those "right kind of guys" that were his unquestioned "yes men" (in Kelly's eyes), even if they couldn't execute at nearly the same levels as the ones who he didn't perceive as unquestionable "yes men."

If any of the veteran players from the Weis era made a dumb mistake, and later on, the higher rated recruits, getting any forgiveness from Kelly would be like pulling teeth with a pair of rusty pliers.

They'd be benched in favor of one of his RKoG's.

On the other hand, those RKoG's would make many dumb mistakes or simply couldn't do the job, but Kelly would leave them be.

This was prevalent throughout his entire time, although significantly less so during Kelly 2.0.

Still, seeing Trevor Ruhland out there, playing on two wrecked knees that most of us here couldn't walk on, or Cain Madden with a useless arm, when there were better players available, speaks volumes. Seeing Joe Schmidt out there in 2015, when he was playing on a hobbled leg the entire season, was similarly painful, that he went from running a 4.9 40 yard dash time in 2014, to 5.2-5.3 in 2015 after that surgery.

Don't get me wrong... I have all of the respect in the world for Ruhland, et al., for being tough competitors, and doing an OK job, but the man shouldn't have been playing on those bad legs, and it certainly cost him his health once football was over.

A lot of the players during the Kelly era were hesitant to cut loose, out of fear of making small mistakes.

You can see a huge difference on Marcus Freeman's teams. The players are playing with cool, calm heads, knowing that if they screw up, that it doesn't necessarily mean the death of their careers.


Link: https://www.pjstar.com/story/sports/college/2011/11/03/te-o-everything-back-to/42378996007/