Brian Kelly Didn't Win A Title At Notre Dame Because Of Brian Kelly, Not Notre Dame
Brian Kelly is in peak Brian Kelly form.
No, that doesn't mean he's working hard at getting his team ready to reach its full potential. That version of Brian Kelly is long gone. The Brian Kelly I'm referring to is the one who seems to spend as much time creating narratives and playing golf as he does coaching football.
And don't get me started on recruiting.
You know the Brian Kelly I'm talking about, it's the Brian Kelly that taps into his political pedigree to create narratives that are either loosely based on facts, or those that are just pure spin. A sad attempt to blame everyone else for his own failures.
Remember the "This is the best coaching job of Brian Kelly's career" this past year at Notre Dame. Yes, the year in which Notre Dame went 11-1 ..... but 0-1 against ranked opponents, was the best coaching job of Kelly's career.
That was peak Kelly as a coach at Notre Dame. A lot of wins, very few, if any, against opponents that were on his team's level.
I doubt Kelly actually believed that. It was nothing more than yet another attempt by him to extort more money from Notre Dame off the work being done by his assistants and of course, the work being put in by his players.
What I do feel is at the core of Kelly's belief system is the absurd quote he gave the Associated Press.
“It’s been awesome because you’ve got incredible facilities, you’ve got players that want to be great,” Kelly told Ralph Russo of the Associated Press regarding his decision to head to LSU. "I want to be in an environment where I have the resources to win a national championship."
This one is even better .....
"I felt like I did everything that I could at Notre Dame and they felt like they did everything they could for me."
That's at the core of Kelly's belief. Notre Dame failed to win a championship .... wait, let's be more clear .... Notre Dame failed to win a major bowl game, Notre Dame failed to even be competitive on the biggest stage because of everyone else. They were there because of his greatness, they failed because of everyone else.
You read that quote correctly. Kelly said he went to LSU because he wanted players who wanted to be great. That is peak Brian Kelly. It wasn't him, it was the players. Kelly's lack of respect for his own players is not new, but it is the reason I chose to write this column. Kelly crossed a line with that comment, because it was the players that carried him all these years, not the other way around. He never gave them as much as they gave him.
When he talks about recruiting problems at Notre Dame he was saying his players weren't good enough to compete, when all along it was him. His comment to the AP is yet another example, at LSU he'll have players who want to be great.
You don't make that comment if you aren't contrasting your current roster with the previous one you coached. It was a huge slap in the face to the players that carried him the last decade, the players who were the true heart and soul of the program, the players that in many instances won in spite of Kelly more than it won because of him.
It wasn't his decision to call 30+ pass plays in the middle of a hurricane, it was the fact his center couldn't snap, his quarterback couldn't throw and his kicker couldn't kick in the middle of a hurricane.
Him calling a deep shot on a rollout with his true freshman backup quarterback while in field goal range in the fourth quarter of a one-point game against Tulsa wasn't hit fault, it was the player's fault.
It was a lack of talent and poor facilities and the lack of an on-site chef that resulted in Notre Dame losing twice to Navy during Kelly's tenure.
Kelly going for two in the fourth quarter with his team up 11, a terrible call that failed and allowed a 3-6 Northwestern to tie the game and eventually win in overtime wasn't his fault, it was because Notre Dame didn't give him an on-site chef for meals.
It wasn't his fault that he went 5-6 against Stanford during his career, it was the lack of facilities and support from Notre Dame. Of course, we all know Stanford has phenomenal football facilities, right?
That's called sarcasm, in case you were wondering.
People have often asked me why I was so hard on Kelly during a stretch in which Notre Dame went 54-9, and this is why. I've been fortunate over the years to get to know many former Irish coaches, players, family members of players and others very close to the program. Talk to them and you'd hear a completely different story of what was going on inside the program, it was a version that was far, far different than the public narrative that Kelly created.
If you heard the hundreds of stories I've heard over the years you'd come away feeling it was more about Notre Dame winning because of the players and some of the assistants, and it was often in spite of the head coach, not because of him.
This is the same head coach who would often leave during winter workouts, rarely to be seen, and wouldn't arrive back on a full-time basis until spring football began.
This is the same head coach who constantly complained and whined about how the weather and Notre Dame's inherent "deficiencies" and "strict" academic standards forced him to "shop down a different aisle" on the recruiting trail.
Of course, it was rarely Kelly who did the actual shopping. That was often beneath Kelly, who often left that up to his assistant coaches, and far too often Kelly put together a coaching staff that failed to have enough strong recruiters on staff to really compete against the big boys.
It wasn't the admissions department, or Swarbrick, or the lack of an in house chef, or any other failure on Notre Dame's part that kept Kelly from putting in the work on the recruiting trail. If you've followed me over the years you know this complaint isn't new.
It wasn't Notre Dame that resulted in Kelly often refusing to put in the work needed to land top players, even when his assistants and coordinators begged him to do so. Stories of Kelly's laziness on the recruiting trail have been around for a very long time, and there was no one else to blame for that but Kelly.
Kelly was often an absentee head coach, and that's why the primary drivers of the program's 54-9 record since his 4-8 debacle are the players that put on the uniform, it's assistant coaches like Harry Hiestand, Clark Lea, Mike Elko, Marcus Freeman, Chip Long, Tommy Rees, Mike Elston and of course strength coach Matt Balis who did the heavy lifting while Kelly traveled all around the country.
Now, we see Kelly all but blaming his players not wanting to be great (that's his quote) and Notre Dame's lack of support for his failures.
Make no mistake, Kelly's failures on the big stage, Kelly being 0-fer in major bowl games, the BCS championship and the College Football Playoff was about his inadequacy, not inadequacy on his roster, or a lack of support from the institution.
Kelly will throw under the bus anyone that stands in the way of his legacy.
That includes his players, his assistants, and the AD who supported him through a 4-8 season, a pair of tragic deaths of Notre Dame students and an academic scandal that saw Notre Dame forfeit 21 games over two seasons. David Grimes anyone?
Kelly went through multiple periods during his Notre Dame career that had many calling for his job, and if my sources are correct (and they almost always are) after the 2016 season that included some very important and influential people. There was a strong movement on campus to have Kelly removed, but Kelly had one very, very important supporter.
Jack Swarbrick.
Since leaving Notre Dame, Kelly has thrown several sideways jabs at Swarbrick. You know, the man who made the push in the last decade to raise and spend well over $600 million dollars to add a new playing surface, completely overhaul and renovate the stadium, to overhaul the practice fields, who fought for big pay raises for assistants and who gave Kelly one of the very finest indoor football facilities in the country.
Oh, and the guy who gave Notre Dame a watered down schedule that allowed Kelly to go 54-9 while going just 10-9 against opponents that finished the season ranked in the Top 25, and just 2-6 against teams that finished ranked in the Top 10.
Kelly was always quick to take the credit but never accepted the blame, and that clearly hasn't changed.
Now, do Notre Dame's facilities still have room for improvement? Of course, no one at Notre Dame denies that. But Kelly acting as if his players, and the lack of facilities, and the lack of support kept Notre Dame from winning a championship says more about him than it does Notre Dame.
Notre Dame certainly didn't lack the talent to win a title in 2015 or 2017. Notre Dame had a Brian Kelly problem in those seasons.
In 2015 his failure to address the issues with the strength program and at defensive coordinator, problems that were evident during Notre Dame's epic November collapse in 2014, wasted an absolutely loaded roster. That defensive coordinator decision held back one of the greatest linebackers to ever lace it up for Notre Dame.
From the moment Marcus Freeman arrived at Notre Dame he conducted himself as the anti-Kelly. Instead of blaming Notre Dame for any shortcomings, Freeman has pointed to what makes Notre Dame unique as the reason he and the program have had the success it has had.
Let's not forget Notre Dame has the No. 1 ranked recruiting class in the country and is in the process of closing on a number of 5-star recruits. Freeman is also shopping down a different aisle, but it's an aisle filled with elite players. It's amazing what happens when a coach with character who values his players and is willing to work his tail off gets hired at Notre Dame.
It's not a coincidence that Freeman, in less than a year and a half, has destroyed all the false recruiting narratives Kelly worked hard to create. I mean, it was some of the hardest work Kelly put in at Notre Dame, building up this narrative.
Notre Dame's facilities haven't changed since Kelly left. The admissions standards haven't changed since Kelly left. There has really only been one big change, and that is Freeman is here and Kelly is gone. That's the difference.
You see, Freeman isn't an excuse maker. He's a doer. He hired a staff filled with doers. He put together a group of coaches who embrace Notre Dame's uniqueness, and as I've written about in the past, that is why Freeman will succeed in areas Kelly could not.
You see, it was never about Notre Dame, it was always about Brian Kelly.
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