Kelly mostly restored a home field advantage. Freeman has lost it.
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Replies to: Kelly mostly restored a home field advantage. Freeman has lost it.
Freeman has brought more flash and at the same time has reversed a lot of the positives Kelly did.
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I'll add a few more, with the risk of being flamed.
1. Kelly had no problem replacing a QB in game (see Coan replaced by Buchner for a series or two).
2. Kelly beat the teams he was supposed to beat (post 2016)
3. Kelly had no problems calling out refs when a penalty was doubtful
4. Kelly was much more involved with the offense during games
5. Kelly showed much more emotion on the sidelines (re purple face).
To paraphrase a popular political question:
Is Notre Dame better off now than they were 4 years ago? Looking at the records of the last few years gives you the answer.
Flame away
1. is not true. See Golson and Wimbush. Coan was also an example. Pyne was better.
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No he wasn’t. I sat through the Stanford game. He sucked
Buffalo balls and couldn’t see over a defense.
Wasn't Wimbush replaced by Book rather early? And I
clearly remember Kelly replacing Coan by Buchner a few times during games for a change of pace.
No. Book beat out Wimbush in the Spring going into 2017. Wimbush got the start anyway.
It was Pyne they skipped by bringing in and giving Coan the job. Coan was playing bad, not as bad as RL. Fortunately, he was injured in the Wisconsin game and Pyne brought us back for the win (otherwise likely a loss). Then Pyne went on to an 8-1 record.
The next season they handed the job to Buchner with almost no PT and disregarded the way the team responded and gelled with Pyne in; hence his record.
More than anything, we are dealing with some bad growing pains of a first time HC. I didn't think
last week would happen in Year #3 of his tenure. It's one thing to have bad week and lose to some Power 4 team, but as I've said repeatedly, there is really no excuse and it's just unacceptable to lose to a MAC school. What I've liked about MF is that he went out and surrounded himself with good coaches and coordinators that have a lot of experience. As one of you said on a below thread, not sure if Golden and Denbrock are helping to mentor him or not, but I would think they give him advice. I can't imagine them being afraid to speak up. Another positive is his first two recruiting classes were decent. This 2025 class ranking seems to be dropping which is concerning. How ND responds against Purdue will say a lot. They really should throttle Purdue, but for whatever reason, the offense overall and QB play specifically needs to step it up big time. I'll conclude, it besides me why ND continues to to hire a HC with no HC experience. It's just stupid and that is a big part of what we've been seeing over the last few seasons. I hope MF can turn it around. With his personality, winning will cure a lot of ills, especially with recruiting. If he doesn't succeed, ND needs to quit screwing around and go out and get the best coach possible and fork up the cash. Money talks and I still believe it's a very desirable job, but the school needs to fully back the program.
So far MF's recruiting classes are almost exactly inline with Kelly's. More talent has played
earlier under MF. More boneheaded mistakes have been made under MF, leading us to roughly the same place of confusing results.
Kelly, for all of his faults, was/is an experienced HC. That gave him the ability to limit damage
...at least when he was fully engaged and chose to do so.
Going with a first-time HC (yet again and certainly against my preference) meant that there would be a learning curve, even if ND got lucky and found the unpolished diamond.
Year 3 is indicating that they have missed yet again (who could've thunk it?). So my only qualification is that some of this disparity could've been predicted (up to now)...BUT now it won't abate and will continue through year 5. (See Faust, Davie, Weis...as we all know...having lived it.)
This is why it was so frustrating hearing people say we needed to get away from this type of hire
regarding Kelly.
Kelly didn't work out, he wasn't the right guy, but he was exactly the right type of hire.
If we always hired highly experienced HCs we would have a much higher hit rate and a more consistently high level program.
Rockne was a unicorn and we need to stop trying to force feed finding another one.
Kelly was a good choice at the time and WAS the right guy to bring the program back to a certain...
level after the three stooges who preceded him. It turned out he could not generally win (and sometimes not even compete in) the big game and could only attain (maintain) a certain level. Once this became apparent, he should have been let go and another up and coming HC WITH EXPERIENCE should have been tried.
Kelly should never have been allowed to hang around at his pleasure. Yes, it may have cost a good 2018 season, but being stuck with a purple ceiling became its own curse of sorts...
Fully agree, but my main point is a resume with college HC experience is the right kind of hire..
as long as there is no indication they are reluctant recruiters.
Secondary would be that they are an EXPERT on at least one side of the ball as demonstrated by outstanding coordinator performance.
No argument here...
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He is more than likely laughing all the way to the bank.
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