My first anti-Brian Kelly blog ever, hopefully the last.

The last two weeks of college football have been an absolute mess for my personal fanhood. My two schools Nebraska and Notre Dame have had their seasons crumble from promise to secondary bowl game bids at best. I am not going to talk about how bad Nebraska played because all of my friends and family told me to not even watch the DVR'ed game. What I am going to talk about is the Notre Dame/Northwestern game I witnessed first hand in Notre Dame stadium yesterday. On the surface it shouldn't surprise me, since my time as a graduate student at Notre Dame I have personally seen the Irish lose many heartbreaking games in that stadium. From overtime losses to Michigan St, Pittsburgh, and Navy, ridiculous losses to Syracuse, UConn, and Tulsa, to the "Bush-Push" vs USC. In my opinion yesterday's loss is the worst of all of those because I put it squarely on Brian Kelly. Over the years I have become a bit more realistic about my expectations for the Notre Dame football, I no longer hold on to those childhood fantasies of Notre Dame going undefeated like so many others. The fact is before the season started, everyone knew the defense was young and the players returning such as Matthais Farley were not more talented than the younger players. In fact, ND has 1 SR listed number one on the depth chart, Cody Riggs, and he's been on campus for 5 months only after transferring from Florida as a 5th year. Notre Dame has 10 underclassmen getting significant playing time, so the early season success was a mirage. The problem with the loss against Northwestern was the abysmal play-calling of Brian Kelly.

Notre Dame has 3 talented runningbacks and it has become pretty apparent that Tarean Folston is Brian Kelly's favorite. Northwestern is 71st in the NCAA in rushing defense, and 52nd against the pass, so Notre Dame obviously is going to come out running the ball.. right? Oh no let's start chucking it on 3 straight plays. Luckily ND picked up a 3rd and 10. ND ran a read option that Golson took 61 yards.. maybe that'll get them running the ball again. Nope, Notre Dame continued to throw the ball at an alarming rate. The best drive the Irish had all game was in the 2nd quarter where they ran the ball 6 consecutive plays and ended the drive with a TD pass to a wide open Will Fuller.

The complete lack of adjustments from Brian Kelly is probably where I have the biggest issue. Golson started the game 5-13 passing with an INT. In this offense that is predicated on timing routes that's pathetic, and it was clear to everyone watching that game that Golson didn't have it. In baseball, if your pitcher is getting his curveball hit all over the place after 2 innings, you sure as hell don't keep throwing curveballs. Yet Kelly kept with his "throw the ball at all costs" attitude when Folston was averaging 5 yards a carry and ND's defense struggling. I am still baffled that Greg Bryant doesn't see the field at all. I feel like he must be terrible in practice or something for Kelly to trust running the ball with Chris Brown as much as he does with a top recruit like Bryant. In the last 5 games Greg Bryant has 6 carries. I am not saying he needs 15 a game, but the fact he's getting less than 2 a game is absurd. Especially when the other running back getting any carries is Cam McDaniel who might as well be a 1980s Big Ten RB, 3 yards and cloud of rubber pellets via field turf. You know what they say about Cam McDaniel, if you need 3 yards, he'll get you 3 yards, if you need 5 yards, he'll get you 3 yards. Bryant can be the change of pace back for Folston, but he seems to be in the Brian Kelly doghouse to the demise of the offense.  If Bryant isn't your guy, then put Carlisle back there, he is a natural runningback, and it's not like anyone is throwing him the ball. He's had 8 catches in the last 9 games, and 1 TD which was on a blown coverage by ASU where no one was within 10 yards of him. At the end of the night, ND had run 40 times (including Golson none designed scrambles) and thrown 40 times, only completing 21. That run/pass number should have been more like 30/50 if the correct adjustments were made.

Then there were the "what just happened" moments from Brian Kelly. Such as running a jet sweep with Chris Brown from inside the 10, in which he was so excited he might be able to score for only the 3rd time in his career (also known as Saturday for Will Fuller) he dropped the ball and cost ND at least 3 points, with the caveat being Brindza being able to actually make a FG or a holder getting the ball correctly. You really feel like putting the ball in Chris Brown's hands on a running play is the best option? Really Brian? Then the fact Notre Dame called a timeout on an extra point up 11 (a TD, a 2 point conversion, and FG lead) to go for 2 instead of making it a 12 point game where the opponent has to score 2 TDs to have any chance, is some next level Les Miles idiocy. The fact that even in the post-game press conference he didn't really get why it was horrible makes me think someone slipped him an ambien pre-game. Seriously did Mike Greenberg get to him?

I'll finish my anti-Brian Kelly rant with this, I like Brian Kelly, I wanted Notre Dame to hire him before they did, I was sick of the Davie-Willingham-Weis era of Notre Dame football where we were hiring coaches with very little to no track record of head coaching. This is why watching that game on Saturday made me so angry, because I supported this guy through all of the problems, and there were quite a bit if you remember 2010 and 2011. I am not going to be one of these unrealistic fans that wants Brian Kelly and VanGorder fired like the miserable 55 year old next me at the game on Saturday. I just want our coaches to hold themselves just as accountable for their decision making as they do their players. This defense is young, inexperienced, and getting worn down, they are asking a lot out of so many 18-20 year olds. It's on the offense and Brian Kelly in particular to skew his game-plan around protecting that defense. If he doesn't this team will be 7-5. Go Irish.