Notre Dame Recruiting: Irish Losing Big Recruits Will Doom Brian Kelly

Brian Kelly's Notre Dame career is getting shorter as the 2012 recruiting season rolls on. A coach of the Irish is expected to post sterling results on the field that are fueled by stellar athletes from top-ranked recruiting classes. 

Kelly has done a decent job of recruiting, but he is losing out on valuable recruits this year, and that is going to cost him. 

2012 Recruiting Class

Notre Dame appears to have lost out on two of its biggest recruiting targets. First there was top-rated QB Gunner Kiel. The Indiana native decided to leave his home state as he chose LSU over Notre Dame. 

One of the first objectives for any successful program is to lock up in-state talent. It was a big black eye for Kelly to lose out on this prized Indiana recruit. 

Just as damaging for Kelly is the fact that top-rated cornerback Ronald Darby has de-committed from the Irish just weeks before signing day. 

Here is Darby on the subject, as quoted by IrishSportsDaily.com, and comes to us via Keith Arnold of NBC Sports: 

"

It changed. I knew it wasn’t going to stay the same, but everything changed after a while.

I like Notre Dame, don’t get me wrong, I love it. But I’m a good track runner as well and Notre Dame is a football powerhouse, not really a track one.

"

Track program or not, the fact that Kelly couldn't hold on to a top recruit that had already committed is not going to help his stock. 

Kelly's Doomed Future

Kelly and the Irish had clearly deemed the secondary as a priority this recruiting season. Before Darby backed out of his commitment, six of the 12 commitments the Irish had received had been players slotted for the secondary. 

Darby was the centerpiece of this group and now he is gone. This means that the Irish are going to have to focus their efforts on filling his vacated slot and turn some of their attention away from helping an offense that struggled this season.

At the center of their offensive struggles was erratic QB play. The Irish QBs combined for a passer rating of 129.6, throwing for 21 touchdowns and 17 interceptions. 

They have some young QBs on this roster, but neither Tommy Rees nor Andrew Hendrix showed anything that proved they could lead this team to the heights that Notre Dame alum expect, and ultimately this is going to be what dooms Kelly. 

This Notre Dame squad does not have the talent to become a BCS team in the next couple of years, and Kelly will not survive this with his job.