Notre Dame Head Coach Brian Kelly Faces Tough Questions

Brian, we need to have a sidebar.  The kind of sidebar I watched you attempt to have with starting quarterback Everett Golson after a turnover against Northwestern before he brushed past you on the sideline without a second glance, ignoring whatever coaching you attempted to impart.

Take a deep breath and settle down.  You’re amongst friends.  I’m not a part of the angry mob beginning to gather outside the football offices of the Guglielmino Athletics Complex after the worst loss suffered under your leadership.  Sure, some might claim the Tulsa or Navy losses in 2010 were the worst, and we can’t forget the blowout in the BCS National Championship game against Alabama, but they’d be wrong.  You were still building your program then, Brian.  When Notre Dame lost to Tulsa and Navy, it was, “Just wait until Kelly lands ‘his guy’ at quarterback,” and after Alabama it was, “Just wait until Golson is no longer a wide-eyed freshman and has some experience under his belt.”  Well, the entire 2014 roster has your thumbprint on it from top to bottom, and the days of “just wait until” have come to an end.

As a lifelong Michigan resident, I’m not an outsider you had to sell yourself to when you arrived in South Bend nearly five years ago.  I’ve watched your career trajectory first-hand, making the Grand Valley State University Lakers a household Michigan name after compiling 118 wins and two national championships.  Before you patrolled the sidelines of Notre Dame Stadium, I watched you pace the sidelines of Waldo Stadium in Kalamazoo, MI, where you took a Central Michigan football team that had been the doormat of the MAC and beat Western Michigan, Central Michigan’s arch-rival and my alma mater.  I was in the stands that day, and through the falling snowflakes and cold I saw a man with a confident, borderline cocky smile.  It was one that knew he was a rising coaching star, and that programs such as Western Michigan were just pesky nuisances he had to sift through before finally being called to the big leagues.  I know what you’re capable of because I’ve watched the results for decades, long before anyone outside of Michigan knew your name.  And who would have thought all those years ago inside the small confines of Waldo Stadium that we’d be connected again, with you as Notre Dame’s head coach and me covering the team I grew up adoring?

Which is why I’m here to tell you the mob circling the football program is not composed of irrational fans angry about the fact that you haven’t won five national championships in a row, with margins of victory of fifty plus points per game.  I may not be among their number but I can hear them just the same, and this mob has valid points as sharp as the pitchforks they are starting to wield.

The goal of this season, if we’re being honest, was two-fold: to prove Notre Dame belonged with the elite and to put the college football world on notice that in 2016, the Fighting Irish are one of the favorites to win a national championship.  Those goals were still attainable even after the Arizona State disaster, which you described as the “debacle in the desert.”  But it would have involved winning out and beating a well-respected program in a bowl game.  After Saturday’s defeat at the hands of Northwestern, the only goal is to avoid the catastrophe of a five-loss season.  And if we’re still being frank with one another, the loss to Northwestern says far more about the current state of Notre Dame football than it does a Northwestern program on a down cycle that served as a glorified punching bag for Iowa and Nebraska just a few short weeks ago.

We could discuss the historically poor play of Notre Dame’s defense as of late, but that’s a topic for another day.  It was well known prior to this season that the defense was going through a transitional period, and Notre Dame’s offense was finally going to have to step up and share its portion of the burden.  And the time had come – in the fifth year of your leadership, the Kelly offense needed to finally emerge, and it needed Golson to become a star.  The offense has managed to put large quantities of points on the board – the problem is many of the points scored were on the opposing team’s behalf as well.  Golson now has 19 turnovers in a seven game stretch.

I know you’re in a bind.  Everett Golson gives you the best chance to win, and the mob is calling for backup quarterback Malik Zaire to get a chance when only you and your staff are truly qualified to know whether or not he’s ready.  You’re also no doubt aware of the disastrous result when Michigan pulled senior Devin Gardner in favor of inexperienced sophomore Shane Morris.  But what you have to understand is that there has to be some form of accountability.  The issue with Golson isn’t that he’s making mistakes – it’s that he’s repeating the same ones with no consequence.  No one player is above 19 turnovers in seven games, and what message does it send to the rest of the team when Golson can trot off the field and simply say, “We’ll get ‘em next time”?  If you refuse to impose accountability on those who continue to make the same mistakes, well, inevitably the accountability is shifted onto your shoulders.

What the solution is to these problems, I don’t know.  But I can tell you Notre Dame fans are tired of seeing walk-on players from other teams – such as Northwestern’s walk-on kicker going 4-of-5 on field goal attempts – outplaying Notre Dame’s heralded recruits, like Irish kicker Kyle Brindza going 0-of-2, including a missed attempt in overtime.  And with Golson likely returning next season now that the early NFL departure talk has been eliminated due to ball security concerns, the elephant in the room shows no sign of disappearing.  If the turnover issues fail to turn around, the mob outside the Guglielmino Complex will multiply several fold until the quarterback question spirals out of control.

What concerns me most is the confident smile of inevitability that I saw through the snowstorm in Kalamazoo years ago has been replaced by a man who looks exhausted, and one who appears to have allowed doubt to begin to enter his mind.  The next two weeks are the most critical of your five year tenure in South Bend and will largely determine whether or not Notre Dame is on its way up or down as a program.

As someone who has watched you since before the spotlight first glared in your direction, I know you have worked your entire career for a stage that a place like Notre Dame presents.  This is your moment to prove that smile on your face in Waldo Stadium years ago, one that you likely thought no one ever noticed, was justified.

So what’s it going to be, Brian?

Scott Janssen is a blogger for the Huffington Post and has authored several nationally-featured articles, including an appearance on MSNBC as a sports contributor.  He talks football 24 hours a day, much to the chagrin of his wife and those around him.  Scott can be reached at scottjanssenhp@gmail.com.