Brian Kelly's Two Big Flaws Were Exposed By Cincinnati
Notre Dame saw its 26-game home winning streak come to a crashing halt yesterday when the Cincinnati Bearcats beat the Irish. Cincinnati out-coached and out-played the Irish for 60 minutes. The loss was disappointing in many ways, but the foundational flaws that led to this defeat, and the poor play at spots leading into this defeat, were avoidable.
Look, losses happen, and no team goes undefeated on an annual basis. What makes yesterday so disappointing is it wasn't simply the case of a better team winning, or Notre Dame simply having an off game, which happens to every team. This was the continuation of lingering issues that continue to rear their ugly head in exactly these types of games.
This game was indicative of what has kept Brian Kelly from taking the Notre Dame program to the next level. It's his inability to get his teams ready to play in "big games" and his unwillingness to properly identify and address coaches that are falling short. Those two "issues" go hand in hand.
Yes, Kelly has brought the program a very long way in his 12 seasons in charge. Over the last five seasons (2017-21) the Irish have gone 47-9, which is a really, really good mark. The 2-6 mark against opponents ranked in the Top 10 during that stretch .... not so much.
Notre Dame is 13-9 against ranked opponents during the five-year stretch, but it is just 5-5 against opponents ranked in the Top 25 at the time the teams played in 2019-21. What we have seen in recent seasons is Notre Dame no longer losing to unranked teams, it doesn't lose to inferior teams anymore, but teams with equal or similar talent continue to beat Notre Dame.
It's also not a "Clemson and Alabama problem," as the Irish are just 12-7 against opponents not named Clemson or Alabama, and 1-4 against Top 10 opponents not named Clemson or Alabama.
For all the good that Kelly has done to get Notre Dame out of the wilderness of mediocrity in which it roamed for 20 years, its his refusal to make some tough decisions on his coaching staff, or perhaps unwillingness to recognize the problems, that has kept this program from taking the big final step.
I still often wonder just how good the 2015 team could have been if Kelly would have come to grips with something just about everyone outside the program knew in 2014, and that was Brian VanGorder wasn't that guy, and Paul Longo's strength program wasn't getting it done.
Instead, Kelly said Notre Dame just needed to coach a little better and play a little harder after it went 10-3 in 2015, losing three of four games against ranked opponents (it's only ranked win was over Navy).
The 2015 season was a huge missed opportunity, and it wasn't until Notre Dame started the 2016 season off with a 1-3 record and things hit rock bottom that he made the decision to fire VanGorder. Perhaps a better way to say that is he was forced to fire VanGorder. He also overhauled the strength program following the 4-8 debacle.
Kelly's stubbornness to admit mistakes with his coaches is why the 2021 team has yet to play anywhere close to its potential. The coaching at offensive line and wide receiver are problems in 2021, and that's not a new thing.
Many of the conversations and critiques I'm making about the 2021 line are the some that were made in 2018 and 2019, especially 2019. Instead of focusing on how poorly the line played for much of the 2019 season, including in a 45-14 loss to Michigan, Kelly instead chose to focus on the fact the line was good enough to beat a second half of the season schedule that consisted of Power 5 opponents that combined to go 30-33.
The only win over a ranked opponent that season came against Navy. That was also true in 2015.
The comeback to this criticism is the success of the 2020 offensive line. Forget for a second the significant influence Chris Watt and Harry Hiestand had on last year's line, how is being successful doing your job in one out of four seasons something to be tolerated at Notre Dame, the program known as O-Line U due to the brilliance of the Hiestand tenure.
It isn't, but Kelly has tolerated it.
Instead of holding his position coach accountable, Kelly talks about how "young" his line is, a line that has a 6th-year senior, a 5th-year senior, a senior with three years of starting experience and a junior that started two games a season ago. He ignores the regression we've seen from those players, and instead makes excuses for the poor play and talks about the left tackle health issues.
It's certainly not ideal that Notre Dame has had to play four different left tackles, but that doesn't justify why Josh Lugg has been worse through five games in 2021 than he was during his five starts in 2019, or why Cain Madden's technique playing for Notre Dame is so much worse than his technique a season prior while playing for Marshall.
Lugg, Madden and Jarrett Patterson are three veteran players with a combined 61 career starts, and yet that part of the line has been as bad as the "inexperienced" left part of the line.
The same is true at wide receiver, Notre Dame is one of the few programs in the nation where talented freshmen rarely get on the field, and it often takes three to four years before incredibly gifted athletes are able to play to their potential.
We are seeing talent wasted again in 2021, and since the 2020 season ended we have seen five wide receivers leave the team. That kind of turnover alone should have raised a huge red flag with Kelly, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
None of these issues are new, and Kelly's refusal to address them in years prior has resulted in his offense struggling this season. There is simply too much talent on the Notre Dame offense for this unit to be averaging a paltry 23.0 points per game the last four contests.
After firing Chip Long following the 2019 season, Kelly made the decision to hire Tommy Rees to run his offense, who at the time was 27 years old and had been a coach for just five years. Rees is a very smart young coach, but instead of surrounding him with the best possible staff, Kelly saddled Rees with an offensive line coach that has proven he cannot build an elite line on his own, and a wide receivers coach who also falls short of what we see from other top programs.
These are the self-inflicted wounds that continue to keep Kelly from taking this program over the hump. They are the decisions that continue to result in missed opportunities as a program, and until Kelly is willing to own those mistakes and correct them they will continue to keep him from finally adding to his resume what the great coaches at Notre Dame all have on theirs, a championship.
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