For the record Kelly had a BETTER roster (by far) when he went 8-5 his first season.
I've seen multiple people using revisionist history saying that Kelly was left a mess of a roster and that Freeman had much more to work with in year one. I just want to clear that up.
When Kelly came in the team was loaded on offense and defense with multiple 5* players and future NFL talent at every level. In some cases, historic talent.
Kelly had multiple 5* WRs plus Kyle Rudolph, a loaded Oline and future NFL RBs. We were loaded on defense too.
Offense:
Floyd - 5* - NFL
Kamara - 5* - NFL
Kyle Rudolph - 5* - NFL
TJ Jones - NFL
Theo Riddick - NFL
Jonas Gray - NFL
Robert Hughes - NFL
Cierre Wood - NFL
Tyler Eiffert - NFL
Zack Martin - NFL
Chris Watt - NFL
Trevor Robinson - NFL
Braxton Cave -NFL
Defense:
Manti Te'o - 5* - NFL
Harrison Smith - NFL
KLM - NFL
Prince Shembo - NFL
Louis Nix - NFL
Darius Fleming - NFL
Darrin Walls - NFL
Bennett Jackson - NFL
Robert Blanton - NFL
Ethan Johnson - NFL
Ian Williams - NFL
That's a heck of a roster. Can anyone claim this year's roster was superior? Especially given the dumpster fire that was our WR room?
Replies to: For the record Kelly had a BETTER roster (by far) when he went 8-5 his first season.
No, but let's remember, Kelly inherited a shit show,
From Weis,an unranked outfit coming off 6-6,16-21 last 3 seasons.Freeman inherited a 11-2, 54-9 team last 5 seasons.Huge difference, you have to establish a winning culture, you don't do that overnight.
Bk inherited as much talent as he left..Riddick eifert Rudolph Floyd zmartin
H smith..blanton..Teo.ian williams watt etc...2 nfl hofers 3 first rounders a few 2nds..bk left a better bottom of roster I guess
Talent and culture are not the same thing.
I agree that BK did not elevate the talent.
But, he changed the culture and deserves kudos for that as much as I despise the guy now.
The commonality with both teams was the terribly QB situation
Both had a "chosen one" QB in Crist and Buchner that turned out to not be that good and then got hurt.
The backups (Rees and Pyne) had some good moments, but were very inconsistent.
Wait, so Kelly in fact did not "inherit crap" or a "shit show?" Wow, color me shocked!
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2010's team should have been at least a BCS bowl team, minimum
Some folks (myself included) will point out that the defense wasn't that great in the 1st two thirds of the season.
The bigger problem, though, was that Brian Kelly insisted on using all of that offensive talent to run his dink 'n dunk passing offense, along with making Dayne Crist run too many designated QB runs. Had he simply let the team run standard dropback passing plays and throw the ball downfield, that offense would have been far superior.
Crist did what he could in that non-optimal offense, and actually came away with decent numbers until he got his knee blown out in the Tulsa game. 59% completion, 15 TD, 7 INT.
Interesting that you would call those decent numbers
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Let’s see how Freeman pans out….
Jury is out.
Agree.
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