Notre Dame Football Recruiting: Brian Kelly Needs to Make a Big Splash

Brian Kelly is entering his third season as the head coach at Notre Dame, and this National Signing Day is crucial in his quest to build this program into a national power again. He has to make an impact this year.

Former Irish head coaches like Bob Davie and Charlie Weis struggled in their third year and were fired shortly thereafter. In this new era of college football, coaches have to see positive results in a hurry.

The Irish are off to a good start. Gunner Kiel is one of the nation's top quarterbacks and will make a nice addition to this offense. But there is still a lot of work to be done around him. 

Losing Michael Floyd to the NFL stings and forces Kelly to find another big-play receiver to replace his production. They do have Deontay Greenberry coming in. He is pretty raw right now, so how well he gets coached early is going to determine how successful he becomes. 

The defense still needs to find consistency. Kelly has done a good job of getting solid players on that side of the ball, but they have not been able to land enough of the premier defenders to compete with better teams. 

Four-star defensive end Arik Armstead could be the big domino that Kelly needs in order to convince more top stars to play in South Bend, but he is still debating where he wants to play. 

Kelly understood the pressure that comes with being head coach of Notre Dame when he took the job before the 2010 season. So it is not like he isn't aware that he has to start showing marked improvement on the recruiting trail as well as on the field. 

Right now, Kelly has some nice pieces to build around, but his foundation still needs a lot of work. He needs to convince all of the top recruits that are still considering Notre Dame to come play for him, or else he could find himself in the same boat as Weis and Davie . 

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