“Coaching is making players do what they don’t want to do so that they can become what they want to become.” Great words once spoken by current New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin. Based on that, it appears Notre Dame has the best man for the football sidelines in Brian Kelly. But does Kelly’s hard-nosed style of coaching mean Irish fans will see something different from the mediocrity of the past few seasons?
By Kevin Hunt
His team’s offensive stats are impressive. But so were those of predecessor and pro-style offense guru Charlie Weis. What Brian Kelly brings to the table in South Bend is the attitude and end-of-game punch necessary to deliver wins as a college coach.
The evidence, however, is clear that Weis and his offensive clout didn’t have it for college wins. And now it’s Kelly’s turn to show his stuff. Last year provides some good examples of their differences, both statistically and in the win and loss columns.
Many times stats don’t prove much of anything because talent levels of one team and its opponents can vary so widely. But other times you can find intriguing little pieces among the averages. The table below shows some of the numbers that stand out in a different way.
Notre Dame ranked eighth in total yards gained on offense, but 32nd in points scored on offense among the 120 NCAA Bowl Subdivision teams. Kelly’s former team, Cincinnati, on the other hand ranked 11th in the former stat but fourth in the latter. That tells me that Kelly got more points out of his offense, whereas Weis may have been able to go up and down the field, but most of the yards were either garbage time run-ups or drives that sputtered in the red zone. To put it simply, Kelly got more points-per-yard on offense.
On defense, both the Irish and Bearcats were middle-of-the-pack in terms of yards allowed, but both shared somewhat of a “bend but don’t break” attitude. The numbers, though, show Kelly’s team in Cincy was just plain better than the Golden Domers of 2009.
Don’t like those statistics? The close games of last year have their own stories to tell. Cincinnati was a perfect 12-0 in the regular season – six of those coming on the road, which is almost unheard of these days for a big conference school (Ohio State, for instance, is been well-versed in the cupcake home schedule). The Bearcats held Fresno State scoreless in the fourth quarter to ensure the win. They won five games decided by 10 or fewer points. They won a pair of games by scoring touchdowns in the final two minutes. In short, Cincinnati could do it in crunch time.
Notre Dame was (to put it lightly) painful in the late stages of 2009 games. The Fighting Irish had 10 of their 12 games decided by seven or fewer points. They lost six of those 10, including the final four on their schedule. They got outscored in the 2nd half against rival Michigan as the Wolverines scored a touchdown with 11 seconds left. They gave up 18 fourth-quarter points to Stanford as the Cardinal got a go-ahead score with 59 seconds remaining on the clock. In short, Notre Dame didn’t have it in crunch time.
The overall results speak for themselves – Brian Kelly joined a middle-of-the-road and often forgotten Cincinnati team and took them to two straight BCS games. Charlie Weis came into tradition-dominant, but underachieving, Notre Dame and couldn’t start the bowl-winning engine that has been stalled for years (don’t even try to count the Hawaii Bowl win of 2008). The question Notre Dame fans now ask, “Can Kelly bring his college football coaching charm to the Irish?”
I guess they’re also asking, “What kind of true Irish fan can’t get behind a guy with the last name Kelly?”
This is the first of multiple position previews leading up to Notre Dame football’s season opener against Purdue on Sept. 4.