Notre Dame's Brian Kelly Learns from Mistakes by Re-Recruiting Top Juniors

For Brian Kelly, the first step was learning to recruit with the big boys. The second? Learning how to hold on to the blue-chippers once they got on campus. 

From the minute Kelly arrived at Notre Dame, he didn't struggle fighting for top players with the elite coaches in college football. But the Irish head coach saw his last few football teams fall short of expectations when the potential cornerstones of his roster left South Bend.

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After losing Troy Niklas and Stephon Tuitt after three seasons last offseason, Kelly made certain he didn't fall victim to the same fate this January. With his team home on winter break and a recruiting dead period on hand, Kelly went to work keeping left tackle Ronnie Stanley and defensive tackle Sheldon Day on campus for their senior seasons. 

As Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports reports, that included a full-court press on both prospects. 

"I've had great success keeping Michael Floyd here, keeping Tyler Eifert here, keeping Manti Te'o here and then last year, I was disappointed about one of our players not staying," Kelly told Fox Sports. "I was not going to leave it up to fate anymore that somebody would understand from my perspective that you should stay for these reasons. I was gonna get on the road and make sure we did this."

That meant a recruiting pitch to both players befitting of a "6-star" recruit. (For those new to that ranking, it's the grade Kelly bestowed to Floyd, Eifert and Te'o when they decided to return for a final season in South Bend.) 

So in early January, Kelly boarded a plane to Las Vegas that included an academic adviser, offensive line coach Harry Hiestand and athletic director Jack Swarbrick, and Irish brass essentially re-recruited Stanley to Notre Dame, making sure the benefits of staying in school were being properly weighed against the immediate riches that came with leaving for the NFL. 

Here's more from the Irish head coach on some of the things discussed, via Feldman.

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They hear, 'Well, the NFL will pay for it,' but that's one part of it because there's really only so many things you can do off campus. You have to physically come on campus for X amount of hours left in your degree. There are some specifics there that the academic adviser can talk about and there's a plan that we talked about. If you take these hours this semester, you take this in the summer and you take this in the fall, you have your degree.

And then there's some little things in addition to [that]. You're able to get into OTAs because you'd already have your degree. You don't have to be in school. You can get a jump-start on some other players that can't be part of an OTA practice in April and May. We can lay out an academic plan to have their degree before they start working out and getting ready for the combine.

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While Day's draft grade made the same recommendation as his head coach, Kelly took a similar tactic when approaching his defensive captain about staying for his senior season.

As Irish fans have waited see an undersized but powerful wrecking ball like former Pitt star Aaron Donald, Kelly had defensive line coach Mike Elston and strength coach Paul Longo detail exactly how they would get Day to resemble him. He discussed this plan with Feldman:

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Our strength coach was with us on that one because we wanted to look at some numbers from the combine that we wanted to make him aware of. We felt like we wanted to get him into (former Pitt All-American) Aaron Donald's numbers. It was, 'Right now let's say four teams really like you. If you start hitting these physical numbers, we think 20 teams are gonna really like you, and that's the net benefit for you.'

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Another big part of the equation was the ability to backstop the fear of injury. Notre Dame pledged to cover the cost of a loss-of-value insurance policy for both Stanley and Day, taking away any fears that the decision to return to school could haunt them in the future.

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When Kelly and his coaching staff recruit prospective student-athletes to Notre Dame, they do so pushing a "40-year decision," promoting the value of the degree.

So while the inevitable attrition of some prospects like Aaron Lynch or Eddie Vanderdoes will always happen, it's critical for Kelly to be able to showcase success stories like Eifert, Floyd and Te'o—top collegiate players who helped their cause by staying in school.

That trio certainly did that. And while we can wonder what this season would've looked like had Tuitt and Niklas (and even Louis Nix, who graduated with a fifth year of eligibility remaining) returned, Stanley and Day sticking around shows that Kelly understands that it's not just landing big-time recruits that matters—it's keeping them on campus for four years.