I was around for Holtz and yes, he had a loosing 1st season. However, in all the games we lost, and not by much, the Irish were IN the game, meaning we were really competing and had a chance to win. Others will disagree I’m sure but I got a bad feeling when I saw the TV commercial with Freeman and his players. I didn’t think the head coach should be getting that tight with his players. The thing is that I really like Freeman as a person, but it’s obvious he is woefully lacking as a head coach. The offense is like the Burger joint near my house: some days you get a good burger and hot fries, sometimes the burger is almost as cold as the fries. And even when everything is hot, they mess up the drinks, forget the kids chicken nuggets, etc. You just never know wha you’re going to get, but after a couple of visits, you know it’s NEVER going to be great. If savvy Jack hired Tommy before Freeman took over, Freeman should have said “Fine. You’re paying him but I will bench him if he can’t get it done” OK, toss your empty’s
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No doubt there's a buyout clause....
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incredibly bad spot when they were up by 18 points against us and we ended up making an incredible comeback after a magnificent performance by future NFLer Steve Beuerlein. He was benched during the game for throwing his 17th interception of the year but came back and threw some great passes and everyone made clutch plays. Tim Brown and Milt Jackson had great performances returning punts and catching passes respectively, but look at the talent that was on that team. Beuerlein had about a solid 10 year NFL career, Tim Brown, future NFL Hall of Fame, and some outstanding talent along both lines. One guy was a first round lineman and another was an excellent defensive lineman who was actually converted to an offensive lineman his first year in the pros, so maybe he was out of position all year. Holtz made mistakes too, but a good break can often turn the attitude around which Holtz was able to use as motivation. I believe it can happen for Marcus because the kids love him. I am not so sure about Tommy Rees as I never was fond of his behavior. I think Marcus can still create an attitude for us that can make it happen but Rees may have to go.
Well, maybe not Fickell at this point, but there must be someone out there who would excel at ND. Of course that would require actually ‘ doing a coaching search’, possibly even leaving your swanky AD office and doing some work (looking at you Jack). I do know that there are people on this web forum alone who have done more research on the +/- of who could be a great coach for ND ( a 1,000 times more effort invested than savvy Jack). And that fact alone speaks volumes as how ND remains in the sorry state of affairs we’re in.
Well spoken and he built a winner there from nil