He has used tempo before, particularly in the early years with Rees. There was much discussion here about his philosophy that time of possession doesn't really matter, which many here thought (in my opinion, correctly) that a tired defense does matter in big-time games.

The problem is he grab bags. It takes him half of a season to figure out his players' strengths, which should really be done in practice. I think this comes down to the fact that Kelly's offensive "system" (if you can call grab-bagging a system) doesn't mesh well with what ND is traditionally good at, specifically a run-first, play-action offense. Obviously a coach's job is to tailor the plays to the players, but he has trouble because what we have often doesn't align with what he wants to do. He has always felt like a square peg in a round hole.

Not sure it's past a 1-loss Georgia team or even a 2-loss Alabama team, and certainly not past a 0-loss Cincy team.

their second or third quality wins over the next five weeks and we'll be left asking people to ignore that we remain at zero because after all "if we didn't turn the ball over vs. Cincy we might be undefeated." This in a game where we averaged a whopping 4.61 yards per offensive play losing at home by double digits. Pathetic.

the rest of the field is lacking all around.

Team Rankings has us 3rd hardest in the top 10 and we're currently ranked 8th.

Just about everyone else's schedule sucks too and there's a lot of losing to go around still.

If ND wins out, they're going to be on the bubble. I doubt they get in, but they'll be in spittin distance for sure. No lower than 6th and probably 5th.

we would get our asses kicked by any of the other top three except maybe Cincy. They maybe the ND of the playoffs. Going up against GA, AL, or $OSU could look pretty ugly in the end.