Swarbrick's Interview: Growing Pains For Kelly and Notre Dame Football?

Finally, an article not about expansion.

In the beginning of spring practice, Brian Kelly was critical of the team’s offense in a number of different ways.  Last week in a radio interview with local AM radio station WSBT, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick might have admitted some of the same concerns Kelly did earlier in the year. 

When asked about his impressions of the ongoing Irish practices, A.D. Swarbrick had this to say: “The pace is so unusual and so extraordinary.  My assumption is that some error rate attaches to that pace....you have to try and figure out what’s the norm when you’re operating at that speed.  So, that is going to take me a little time to figure out”. 

But will it take the team a little while to figure out as well? 

Call me jaded, but after seeing what happened with Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines football team, one has to wonder whether or not Kelly will go through the same growing pains Rodriguez is still trying to come out of.  We will soon see if installing the spread offense in a traditionally pro-style system is more like teething than it is liberating.

Looking at Kelly’s record at previous schools for evidence can be slightly deceiving.

At Grand Valley, Kelly didn’t come into a school to change things around, but rather inherited a team through promotion who won at a very high level for decades.  Not only that, but they also had the offensive talent needed for Kelly’s scheme—evidenced by the fact that only two years before they averaged 480.9 yards.

At Cincinnati, Kelly inherited a team who coach Dantonio had taken to their first winning season in 23 years. 

With Central Michigan though, which record-wise can be considered Kelly’s worst transition period as a head coach, he inherited a deeply ingrained pro-style scheme run by Mike DeBord—who was a Michigan assistant coach for seven years and offensive coordinator during their 1997 National Championship. 

After inheriting the CMU team, it took Kelly three years to implement his system at a level high enough to compete in the post-season. 

Some of this had to do with talent, but it is highly probable that Kelly had a harder time implementing his system at this stop as opposed to any of his others. 

Will it be the same at ND? 

Weis’ system has been in place for half a decade now, and Irish starting quarterback Dayne Crist who Kelly plans on implementing his system with wasn’t drafted for his spread abilities.  When coming out of high school, Crist was the second overall pro-style quarterback according to Rivals.com.

Coupled with having to scrap the football fundamentals he has been learning the majority of his life is the fact that his running ability, something he definitely will need to succeed in the spread system, may be compromised due to last season’s ACL injury.

To make matters even more dramatic—Coach Kelly himself has admitted to ESPN that the entire program depends on Crist: “When you cut through it, we're going to be tied to his ability to run our offense”. 

Perhaps the most important question in the air this upcoming season isn’t how well the Irish will do, but rather how well does Notre Dame nation expect them to do? 

What exactly constitutes a successful season?  Does Kelly merely need to do better than his predecessor’s final year, or are there already expectations of celebrating more than the New Year come January 2011. 

Kelly’s arrival to South Bend has been hyped more than any other coach in recent memory, and there is very little doubt that given time he will help make the Irish program relevant once again. 

But in the immediate future, is there, as Swarbrick notes, an assumption that some error rate attaches to his coaching pace?  Or, is that assumption going to take time for those in the stands to figure out?