Brian Kelly Talks About The Staff Change

Kelly is right, the defense isn’t where it needs to be. But the defense wasn’t where it needed to be after last season. This is a move that arguably should have been made after the Fiesta Bowl in January. It’s a little too late.

Firing BVG was the right move and the best move for the long haul, but don’t expect too many short term fixes. Kelly and Greg Hudson are not going to install a brand new defensive scheme in the middle of the season. There is simply just not enough time to do that. So expect much of the same from the Irish defense. Although, if they some how, some way improve on their tackling we would see a decent amount of improvement. But until we see that, don’t expect much change.

You got to wonder if Kelly is including himself here too. I mean we’re talking about a coach who hasn’t won a big game game in quite some time and now is starting to lose to lesser opponents. Kelly has to be feeling some type of pressure, you think? Realistically though, Kelly is not going anywhere...that is unless things get REALLY bad, like losing to Syracuse and Army bad, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility after this past weekend.

See this is where Irish fans are starting to sour on Kelly a little bit. It’s okay to throw your entire team, including your quarterback who has been the lone bright spot for your team, under the bus after the game on Saturday, but it’s not okay to talk about coaching? Interesting.

Hudson does bring a lot of experience, but how much of that was good experience? In three stops at Minnesota, East Carolina and Purdue Hudson never had a defense rank higher than 59th overall. Kelly really didn’t really have the pick of the litter when deciding who would be the interim defensive coordinator. My guess is that someone entirely new will be hired this offseason.

It makes you wonder what Kelly was thinking keeping BVG around this long. Not only did he not produce on the field, but apparently didn’t produce on the recruiting trail either. He was responsible for two recruits in three seasons? Come on. That is just unacceptable. The upside of that is the impact on this year’s recruiting class should be minimal, as Tyler James says above.