you send it to one person, not two or more.
If you send it to two people, each of the recipients will possibly ignore it, thinking "the other guy will respond".
The same is true of defensive gaps.
the 3-3-5 on being small-timey, i.e. coming from Cincinnati. That's nonsense. He played and was a GA at Ohio State. He coached at Purdue (while not a great program, they are in the Big Ten) for four years. His background isn't small-timey.
A seemingly safe 18 point lead. Want to get your guys some experience running a different scheme even though it's not paricularly well-suited to your opponent and their strengths. Unfortunately our offense shuts down at the same time. We are all watching the same game and we are all seeing FSU moving the ball on the 3-3-5 or whatever it was. Cannot believe that all of a sudden Freeman forgets how to coach defense and make adjustments. If ND's offense doesn't go to sleep in the 4th the game ends with something like a 45-27 or 45-30 score and no one gives a crap about our 3 man front in the fouth quarter. And our guys get experience running an alignment that might be well-suited to opponents later in the season. Maybe we should give our DC a pass for this one. Don't think he's Marcus Van Gorder or Marcus Tenuta. Just a thought.
When it was a 10 point game I hope coaches would be playing to win, not trying out a defense that doesn’t fit the gameplan because your guys need experience in a different scheme. Definitely don’t think you do that up 3 with 5 minutes left.
As so many fanboys did. After having anointed Lea to the same status.
It was not a high quality debut. From poor tackling to strange playcalling, I should hope we will make big strides before we get to our conference schedule.
To the worst major conference
…as you would expect, being the product of an extensive national search.
He is still a young coach with a lot to prove.
That installing the new defense took away practice time for reinforcing fundamentals. When Elko and Lea showed up there was a bit of complaining about the attention to detail and time allotted to fundamental work, especially tackling. It may be "boring" but it wins football games.
was wrong? someone decided that it was ok to go to the let them score, but let them take 11 plays, instead of the dominant defense they plays, sans 2 blown plays/play calls. I do not believe that Kelly believes this.
On the same note, belief: I cannot believe a championship coach would go to prevent with 20+ minutes of game time. And on that topic, drives 2-5, 50 yards and punt each time... 1st drive relied upon a 4th down... OL = bigger issues; again, no separation for receivers.
Irish won. End of day, they won. Betting line was 7 and a half. They win by 3. The disdain for Brian on this board is real. There’s only one Saban. Whoever was person behind curtain didn’t want Saban, or was pleased with team’s current success.
It wasn’t pretty. It was ugly .
However, they won.
Your post is identical to what some said after that game. No. That game showed us the truth about his scheme and every single game after that was a disaster.
If the posts on his scheme tonight are true - we have BVG 2 now. Our only hope is Kelly steps in ASAP to force him to modify before we collapse. Also that maybe freeman has enough smarts to modify on his own.
stands this year.
Maybe they rallied around Bobby Bowden and played their best game of the season and will be under .500 like last year. Or maybe they will reel off a bunch of wins and this game will suddenly look better.
It's just too early to say.
I’m praying it is a one off - but the report from jvan is an extremely bad indicator. What we do know is we played certified great offenses last year in Clemson and Bama and didn’t give up as many points in regulation nor as many long plays. There are good reasons to be very concerned.
Maybe that's why we beat them at football nearly half the time!
If kelly said they were hoping to have a more complete performance and they know there’s a lot of work to do but he’s proud of gutting one out, we wouldn’t be blasting him for bringing the attention front and center on his players not doing the things he always prepares him to do.
I’m not offended by the joke. I’m offended that his reaction was to blame the players to start of his interview, regardless of whether he was doing it in an attempt at an unfunny joke.
Not a popular opinion
Will be very appealing to the next head coach/ad combo.
That is the extent of my praise.
years. Hopefully we can land the right coach and AD next go around. Until then let's just hope the embarrassment is kept to a minimum. Sadly.
That's an issue that's beyond ND.
Attendance for everything is down at an aggressive level.
You know Kelly is Jonesing for it.
tour from players dressing room; field ; The Million dollar tent; to private boxes including Jack’s . Extremely impressive.
Again, they won .
on the field, on the sideline and up in the booth. All wins are not equal and if they don’t fix some of the negatives we won’t be saying, “in the end they won” nearly as much as we should this season. Not enough data to judge either team in a reasonable context, but there were enough head scratching negatives on our side to be quite concerned. Kelly made it worse with his comments post game on the field and in the pressed.
Or do we seem to look bad in openers win or lose. Really, my expectations were kind of low. Hoped we would blow them out, but happy to escape with a win.
But I could never be unhappy winning at Florida State
Cesspool program
are blitzing so many folks if anyone misses their gap you are fucked with a huge play.
Last year we blitzed less frequently and guys played to contain on gaps and we hoped to pressure with the DL, which was the deepest part of the team (and probably still is - at least in terms of experienced, quality players).
Do I have this correct? I guess we need to have the D quickly get better at executing the scheme.
Huge assumptions. Was he covering for Freeman and/or himself for the decision to go soft prevent to try to burn clock? It was not because of missed gaps that the 18 point lead disappeared. I cannot speak to the two long TD botches. Maybe those were….. The 2nd half melt down was not missed gap assignments: it was prevent defense and bad tackling.
These kids are in your program for a few years. If they are top players maybe even less.
Why waste the time on overly complicated schemes?
Sure our guys need to run it very well, but once they get it down the different looks with multiple different people rushing and others dropping will make other QB’s make bad reads. In this era of power passing and quick throws, it can make a huge difference.
that our guys learn the system better now than our guys learned the system under Van Gorder?
there was a clear change to what they were doing after we got up 18 and went to what looked like a very vanilla 3 man DL?
It seems that ND reporters haven't read your posts. You've been (rightfully) on this calamity since last evening and not one of these scribes has raised the issue.
Because of that simple rule, the media people avoid controversial questions. They fear being frozen out of interviews.
Having sat in coaches' media sessions for a lot of years, I'm amazed by the poor quality of questions. Most are designed to fill a space in an article that's already written, which I get and which is why I stopped writing game stories a long time ago. However, questions can be phrased to get information without being confrontational.
Like most professionals, coaches love to talk shop. This is the opening that reporters don't exploit. Instead of asking why there was a change, ask about the coach's philosophy of shifting tactics. The former will get standard coach BS at best and defensiveness at worst. The latter is likely to get the coach to tell you how he thinks (hopefully not "if") which can be applied to the situation in question.
An example of how I've done this with Mike Brey when he isn't playing a young guy who looks pretty good when he gets a rare chance. Instead of asking why Joe Schmotz wasn't playing, I asked how he gets freshmen ready to contribute and how he knows when they're ready for more meaningful playing time. That got me a 5-minute response about executing offensive and defensive assignments often enough in practice instead of the standard evasion. The response told me the player was a weak link too often, not based on talent but because he was out of position a lot.
I'd be asking Kelly about contingency game planning for big leads and other situations and see if he'll talk about a thought process that explains what happened Sunday night.
that he should feel free to fire away. And The Athletic should (and I presume would) support that.
There are two choices - (1) Don't rock the boat or (2) ask better questions that will get good information. Inevitably the locals go with #1.
"thought process"?
Tough questions can be asked in a non-antagonizing, hair pulling manner and nobody has the balls or wits about them to do it apparently.
They’ll take his first answer and then move on.
Right after Kelly’s rambling answer about the defense and gap responsibility, Tim Prister asked him about what he saw in Kyren Williams that compelled him to put him at punt returner last night.
Ask him about Freeman’s decision to play the 3-3-5 and then stick with it.
Ask him about the poor clock management that cost them 1-2 plays at the end of the game.
Ask about the flea-flicker and a 3rd & 5 run call to Coan.
Ask about Rees going conservative with a 10 point lead early in the 4th when FSU was clearly building some momentum.
Ask about about giving up almost as many big play TDs in one night as your previous defensive coordinators did combined in the last four years.
What’s the worst that can happen? Brian Kelly will be mad at you? The ND SID won’t be warm and fuzzy with you on Wednesday? I don’t get it.
He probably wouldn’t answer. Or, he’d be an asshole like he was after the Georgia game a few years ago and then still not answer.
Our media (sports or otherwise) is not designed to ask tough questions and take leaders to task. Everything is about getting enough sound bites to produce a boring article with a clickbait headline. Why do you think they’ve latched on to the execute the players “controversy”?
When was the last time you can recall any coach being asked a “hard” question that resulted in them actually answering thoughtfully and not just getting pissy over their genius being challenged?
It's that kind of thinking though that allows Kelly and other coaches to control the press conference and play serve and volley with Kyren Williams punt return questions.
Kelly may get pissy or he may not answer - but so what? He does that so doesn't have to face the music the next time around. And it apparently works.
As Kayo mentioned above and I alluded to earlier, there are skillful and tactful ways to broach some of these questionable coaching decisions. If you phrase the question the right way in a non-attacking manner, you can get answers - maybe not all the time but certainly enough to keep trying.
One media person doesn't have to sit there and rip off every one of these questions back to back but collectively the Notre Dame football press corp could definitely do a better job of holding him accountable and getting answers that would in turn make their articles, podcasts or TV reports a little better - which should be their main objective.
Not all sports media stays away from taking leaders to task. They do a pretty good job of it in New York and Boston - but yes, nationwide, it doesn't happen nearly enough.
The problem is, it's a college town - college media and everybody likes to be liked. Plus, if you're the big bad inquisitor every press conference, you won't get your credential pulled but the next time you ask for 10 minutes alone with Player X for a feature you're working on, the answer may be no. And local media don't like that possibility at all.
of failure every time.
The only thing he says that is true that should be true is "You've got to make that tackle".
ANd if it's hard to get it turned in week 1 when you have had two sets of practice to put it in place, how are you going to fix it with less than a week until the next game??
problem to me.
There could be up to 6 guys that have a certain gap depending on the play and what happens during the play? That’s just asking for mental breakdowns and having multiple guys in 1 gap (like last night and all through the Tenuta/VanGorder eras). How can a head football coach watch the defense that we’ve played the last 4 years and not learn a thing?
that his success at Cincinnati was because he was coaching against less talented players? And now that he is coaching against SEC/ACC level players his scheme falls apart?
It certainly proved true regarding Kelly's offense.
staffs -- ie players can and will rise or fall above mean, and things happen. But what seems consistent is that good teams are either well prepared OR make adjustments that IMPROVE the quality of play, and react to what changes the opposition is making in a positive manner. I realize that the difference between "patient" and "stubborn" is the final score, but it just seems that ND's flaws are exploited more often than opponents' are when the stakes are high or the playing field is level.
Or maybe that is Cash. Or both of you.
There was havoc alright, and it looked like a shit show.
we have more talent than 95% of the rest of the teams. Where does this desire to outscheme come from? You don't need to with that kind of advantage.
I bet we'll kick Toledo's ass, though. Those fuckers will have NO IDEA what we're going to come at them with!
And played scheme games to try and offset talent issues. Before seeing this thread I feared BVG 2 here. We were identical in many ways - all or nothing style. Home run or beaten badly. It smelled like a BVG scheme. Now I read that it actually is one.
Fuck. We are absolutely dead if any of this is even close to true.
Which makes all of this even more confusing to me.
Isn’t one of the simplest defensive schemes of the last ten years Alabama? I remember watching a clip with Saban talking about why his schemes are typically rather simple and it boiled down to what you are saying- why the hell would you do anything except “run fast, hit hard, get football” when you have such high levels of talent?