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Notre Dame Football News and Notes: Yet Again, No Second Guessing for Kelly

The 2016 season is officially in a tailspin for Notre Dame. Yet, Brian Kelly still has no regrets on how he’s coached this season.

NCAA Football: Notre Dame vs Navy Logan Bowles-USA TODAY Sports

On one hand you want your football coach to stick to his guns, but it gets to a point where if he mismanaged the game or made the wrong call you would like for him to own up to it. Not Brian Kelly though. He’s standing behind his decisions no matter what.

A number of Kelly’s decisions have led to this disaster of a season, but he has yet to take responsibility. He didn’t second guess trusting his defense against Michigan State and now Navy. He also didn’t second guess the inexplicable play calling against NC State. Just once you’d like Kelly to say, “Hey, yea maybe I should have done this instead of that.” But what the heck, I guess it wouldn’t change much anyways.

This is something I’ve wondered for quite some time now. Why don’t they just have NCAA refs/replay? Why are refs/replay specialized to each conference? If they just went to a uniform or nationalized refs/replay like Kelly suggests here, it would eliminate the suspicion of bias towards one team or another.

This has been one of the weakest schedules Notre Dame has had in recent memory and you’re three and freaking six. 3-6 with losses to a 2-7 Michigan State team, Navy, and NC State among others. Notre Dame shouldn’t be in the position they are in.

But then you have Kelly over here saying that it’s hard for him to think that major changes need to be made. These are the type of comments that frustrate, confuse, and enrage Irish fans. If things are broke, then you probably should do something to fix it. Lord knows that Notre Dame is a producing a broken product week in and week out.

This is what gives me a glimmer of hope for next season. A lot of these young and talented players are gaining experience and taking their lumps now. Hopefully next year the growing pains will be behind them and the Irish will be ready to rock and roll.

At the same time, you look at schools like Ohio State and Alabama who lost a ton of talent from last year’s teams, and they’re right there as two of the top teams in the country. The difference between them and Notre Dame is that they’re well coached and well at the moment Notre Dame is not.

Other News and Notes

  • Drue Tranquill and Julian Love have entered the concussion protocol.
  • Kelly said Jarron Jones played limited snaps because Navy’s offense neutralizes a player like him.
  • Kelly said that they need to get the left side of the offensive line more involved at the point of attack.