Notre Dame Football: Will Brian Kelly's Staff Shakeups Make a Difference?

Notre Dame fans have good reason to be upset after the last two sub-par seasons under head coach Brian Kelly. When you're a school that's use to winning and competing for BCS bowl games, an 8-5 record is just not going to cut it.

It appears that Kelly gets the memo as well and nobody can't say he's not trying to make changes to improve results. In this short offseason, Kelly has already made several changes to his coaching staff.

Probably the most dramatic change comes from last year's safeties coach Chuck Martin becoming the offensive coordinator. Bob Elliot, who's coached at Iowa, San Diego State and Northwestern, will take over the secondary. Defensive coordinator Bob Diaco has also been given the task of assistant head coach and Kerry Cooks is now the co-defensive coordinator. Kelly was also able to get veteran offensive line coach Harry Hiestand to leave Tennessee and join Notre Dame's new-look staff.

In case you're wondering where some of last year's coaches ended up, Ed Warinner and Tim Hinton are now both assistant coaches for Ohio State. Last year's offensive coordinator Charley Molnar is now the head coach of Massachusetts.

“After every season, when you don’t reach the goals that you set for yourself, it’s important the appropriate measures are taken in terms of evaluating all facets of your program,” Kelly said. “Player development, player personnel, coaching staff…all of those things.”

Kelly is really putting together a veteran group of coaches that should pay off just off of experience alone. Elliot has done great work with his defenses and Hiestand has coached for several teams, including in the NFL where he helped the Chicago Bears go to the Super Bowl.

Chuck Martin has always been known as a defensive coach, but during his year at Grand Valley State, he piled up a 74-7 record. His offenses were very effective and AFCA Coach of the Year award twice.

“I’m excited about that move,” Kelly said. “Chuck and I have a shared vision when it comes to offense. Chuck is experienced and knows what I am looking for.”

Now the question is, will all of these changes work for the Irish?

At this point, nobody really knows for sure. Notre Dame is always an extremely talented team and has the pieces in place to get where they want to go. I'm not so sure the play-calling hurt this team as much as the turnovers did.

This was a team that was ranked 49th in the country in points scored and had a balanced offense averaging 413 total yards per game. But this team has turned the ball over a combined 53 times the last two seasons alone. That's not going to cut it, regardless of the talent you have on the field.

In all five losses last season, the Irish turned the ball over at least three times. That includes five times each in the first two games of the season. Kelly was of course not happy with the offensive production last season and that's the reason for the drastic changes.

“We did not reach the goals that we had set offensively,” Kelly said. “So it was important that we put the pieces together and we started with the coaching staff. I think that we’ve made significant improvements there.”

Changing the coaching staff can be great for this program moving forward, but it doesn't matter who's calling the shots if the players can't hold onto the football. At some point they're the ones that will have to receive some of the blame as well.

Only time will tell if these changes will pay off, but the struggles seem to be much deeper than the guys calling the plays.

Randy Chambers is a B/R featured columnist that covers college football and the NFL. You can contact him @Randy_Chambers or [e-mail].