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team to beat opponents of that caliber other than of course Alabama in the playoffs. It is more the hate that generates those comments.
I want ND to succeed as much as anyone. But the reality is that ND has looked bad on the big stage under Kelly.
They have had a few big wins to go along with some bad losses during the regular seasons. I was just as excited as you when we beat Clemson last year. But those are not the games fans in general remember. They remember the playoff games, the old BCS title games, the major bowl games. ND has played in playoff and title games three times under Kelly, as well as a NY6 game one other time. They have sh*t the bed each time!!
Lest we start another discussion about how ND is better under Kelly than they were before, and Kelly at least gets us there. There is no question that that is true. That wasn't the point of the thread.
College football fans have strong views about ND. There are many haters, as you mentioned. The blowout losses in the big postseason games gives them all the reason they need to diss ND whenever they get the chance. But even the non ND fans that have an admiration for what ND stands for, have to look at those results and think ND gets overrated.
I will root for Kelly for as long as he is the coach, and hope that it is different the next time. My original point stands; until ND shows more in the games that really matter, there will be questions about the ranking that ND deserves.
prepares well and his game plans are solid in the big games. The problem is that in order for a less talented team to beat the Alabamas, Clemsons and Ohio States, is that the better team has to perform at a lower level than their normal. When we played Alabama in 2012 and this year they almost played to perfection and were more talented than us. Clemson in 2018 was a lot better than us as was Ohio State in 2015. However, if you notice the game plan against Alabama this year was pretty solid and though their offense was terrific a couple of plays by our offense might have gotten us some momentum, plus Alabama was clearly better than Ohio State too and our score in fact was closer and we could have made it appear even better if we score at the end. You know it is funny, Sean McDonough who usually is very fair to us spoke of Alabama blitzing us on the last play implying they did it because we called time out at the end. I don't know of any team that would have quit trying to score at the end and the fact that Alabama blitzed when time was running out was more of an unusual defensive call with 1 second on the clock than the fact we had a clock stoppage any way on the play before.
But to your main point, yes the fans do really only remember the playoff games and that is why I think we should hope we qualify every year rather than worrying about winning in an easier bowl at year end. I mean who cares that we beat Iowa State, the year before? More speed on the outside would have helped us big this year but I thought Kelly did a magnificent job getting the team to play as well as they did to get to the playoffs. It is not on him we just need that outside speed.
Also and you admitted this, the haters are always going to point out how we got blown out when other very good teams did too. Notice we are the only team that gets mentioned as "overrated".
them a disservice.
It is now beyond frustrating that Kelly does this with consistency.
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