On the lines of another thread I started, consider this: Dabo Swinney went 6-6 his third year (second full year) and more than a few were calling him "in over his head" and asked why did Clemson not hire an experience head coach. In another sport, Sandy Koufax went 36-40 with an ERA over 4.00 before becoming one of the most dominating pitchers in baseball history. Frank Beamer basically sucked his first six years at Virginia Tech and then then became a top 10 power. Sports history is replete with athletes/coaches who took a little while to find their stride before becoming great.
Look. I'm not saying definitively Freeman will turn out to be a great coach, although I think he may well be. What I'm saying is it's ridiculous, after three games, to say "he's in over his head" and "we made a mistake," "You have to have head coaching experience before being successful at Notre Dame," etc. And let's look at his first three games. He lost close games to two top-5 teams and Notre Dame was still in both games until deep into the fourth quarter. As far as Marshall goes, I could argue that last year's squeaker against Toledo was a worse game for the Irish, as Marshall looks as if they might turn out to have a good team this year.
So again, let's pump the breaks on "Freeman is not the guy." You might be right. But there's zero way to tell at this point.
We might have 3 or 4 years like this. That is why I think you hire a coach with experience that was a winner. We might get there with Freeman, or we might not. IF we don't , we will be in a lot worse shape.
We painfully waited 12 years for Kelly to build the program up to where it's ready for a good coach to come in and win big right away, and we throw it all away (12 years of strife) taking a blind shot in the dark on a guy who was still proving if he was a great DC or not.
It was stupid then, it's stupid now, and the only thing that could prevent it from looking stupid down the road is pure blind luck.
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succeeds at ND but history is not on his side.
The last 3 HC ND hired who had ZERO HC experience failed miserably and 2 of those guys had more experience at their coordinator jobs than Freeman does.
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Losing Tyler is the worst case scenario of all the positions. Awful development for this already down season.
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That was 2007, Saban's first season, which is where the similarities stop.
In the four years "prior" to Saban taking over, Bama was: 4-9, 6-6, 10-2 and 6-7...and they were coming off NCAA sanctions where 16 of those wins were vacated.
Conversely, in the four years "prior" to Freeman taking over, ND was: 12-1, 11-2, 10-2 and 11-1.
One program was at a low point since the early 90s while the other program was at a high point since the early 90s.
The two situations aren't remotely similar...Saban took over a dumpster fire and quickly had them competing at the highest level, while Freeman took over a shining gem already competing at near the highest level and has even more quickly let it become a dumpster fire.
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gone. The sad part is most don’t give a shit. Press, other coaches, top tier players and students from other schools. NBC is next. It was a great part of history while it lasted but it’s over. Except for a few of us diehards the rest of the world doesn’t care.
All we heard was how strong they were going to be on defense & O-line. Freeman even admitted he didn't knock it out of the park when he first got to Purdue & Cinci. It's what you do with the talent. Faust recruited 19 Parade All Americans IN ONE CLASS. Until Holtz got there they either forgot how to win or didn't want to put in the work to win.
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had to carry them through the Wisconsin game. The difference between last year and this is that they had an experienced QB on the roster. The line play is a direct result of possible misevaluations and multiple years of bad coaching. That stuff doesn’t generally get fixed over night. Their LB talent is subpar (again, same issue as last year, blame recruiting) and their Dline is undersized (again, recruiting and they lost KH - their biggest interior DL last year). The roster is down to what, 4 healthy scholarship WRs? The roster is seriously flawed. Kelly squeaked by some BAD teams last year, early, before TR made adjustments with a veteran QB at the helm. Jack Coan is the difference between beating Toledo by 3 and losing to Marshall by 6. …Actually, didn’t Kelly have a habit of squeaking by teams they should beat by 4 scores? Didn’t we want that to end? Part of it is coaching but some of it is talent as well. QB, WR, and OLine need to be recruited better AND coached better. The offense has consistently been the problem for about 6 years now. Freeman has obviously had no say over offensive recruiting or offensive philosophy until he became HC. Give him some time to recruit. Give his coaches some time to teach. This was a double-digit win team but was also an incredibly lucky team and probably an overrated team in some regards. Kelly, being experienced, IS probably more likely to win close games…but we don’t want close games against G5 schools.
best D playmaker.
Nonetheless, we should never, ever lose at home to Marshall, even if Toledo and FSU were probably worse teams last year. That’s on Freeman. Not a good start, but certainly not time to push the eject button and give up on the guy.
People saying that Kelly didn’t lose those games are accurate since 2017 but at the same time, he consistently played with fire and would have lost one of those at some point. This is the least talented roster they’ve had in years in regards to their upperclassmen and QB room.
Hint: Has Foskey just turned in his cleats?
Horribly undersized. 260-270lb interior linemen won’t cut it, especially went your LBs are mediocre and can’t shed blocks. I doubt Foskey has turned in his cleats so to speak. Marshall just ran it right at them; didn’t really give Foskey a chance to hurt them. He was completely ineffective against OSU though
...continuing the theme of great ones who stunk at first.... A classic story that most baseball fans should know, but I'm going to tell it anyway:
When Mickey Mantle was called up to the bigs, he was awful. He was nervous, he was trying too hard, and he failed, bigly. The Yankees sent him back to Triple A.
He then happened to have a game somewhere in the midwest, close enough to Commerce OK that his father, Mutt, could drive over and see him. While visiting with Mickey in his hotel room, Mickey confided to his father that he didn't think he was cut out for baseball, they he just didn't see how it was going to work out. Mutt then grabbed Mickey's luggage and began to pack his stuff.
"Come on home with me. I'll get you a job at the mine. I thought I raised a man, but you're just a boy."
You know the rest. Sure, The Mick in many ways never grew up, but he certainly was a man on the baseball field.
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Or his first year when he got literally destroyed by that Navy fb, and found a way to lose to Tulsa?