Brian Kelly: Can He Make an Instant Impact at Notre Dame?

Notre Dame starts a new era under the helm of Mr. Brian Kelly.

Brian Kelly is an extremely successful college coach and at the end of Charlie Weis’s tenure, it was seen as the perfect remedy for Notre Dame worst malady: Notre Dame has not produced a National Champion team since 1988.

Brian Kelly has a proven winning record.

There is no program he has touched that has not jumped from ignominy to first page. After taking the helm at Grand Valley State University in 1991, it took him 10 years to finally have a breakthrough season in 2001 when he took his team to the conference championship, returning the following year to become Division II National Champions with a 14-0 record.

He repeated the feat the following year with a 14-1 record. In my opinion, his most outstanding record was his team offensive production: 1,205 scored points in the last two years!

Coach Kelly was then hired to revamp Central Michigan football program in dismal conditions with a record of 12–34 in the four years previous to his arrival to the team in 2004.

His first two years of rebuilding the team were followed by winning the West Division, then the MAC championship and finally the Motor City Bowl in his 2006 season.

After his last successful year at Central Michigan, Kelly was hired by the University of Cincinnati looking to overhaul their football program. A middling team under Rick Minter and Mark D’Antonio, the Bearcats exhibited a combined record of 40–41 from 2000-2006; Brian Kelly took this team to a 33-7 record over a three year span.

It is in Cincinnati where Brain Kelly performed what I believe was his most impressive job as Head Coach as make this team a winner from year one and by the third year they beat Pittsburgh to earn the title of Big East Conference Champions in 2009.

Now is the turn for Notre Dame. Notre Dame has gone through dismal seasons under different coaches. Some hope came to light after the first two years under Coach Weis but his tenure never came to fruition even when his own recruits reached the upper class.

With his ability to turn programs around, Brian Kelly was the most logical option for a program in dire condition and with an urge for a drastic turn around as Notre Dame was after Charlie Weis last year.

The task at hand will not be easy.

Granted, Brian Kelly will have better chart depth that what Charlie Weis had but he still have to institute a whole new system. Even when some may disagree, the two most important offensive tools of the past two years, Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate, are now in the NFL and the Irish defensive unit is porous.

Good corps of linebackers, a potential great defensive end (Kapron Lewis-Moore) and a potential great safety (Harrison Smith) is all that Coach Kelly has to work with defensively.

As a Notre Dame fan I am bracing for a transition year and maybe two, and I cannot see the Irish getting ranked any higher than 35-40 by the end of the 2010 season and I will try to explain this position.

Some argument can be made about the teams on ND schedule having "growing pains" and what else not but all of them, except for USC, have the same coaching staff and they have been developing a game system for at least the last couple of years if not more.

In USC favor is the fact that the new coach was part of the machinery that made the Trojans the most competitive team of the past decade.

Analyzing the schedule, I cannot see more than three games that ND should win without question. In October the Irish receive Western Michigan and Tulsa at home, and in November they play as home team against Army.

All these adversaries had losing records during their 2009 campaigns and should mark three sure victories for the Irish.

Some home games will be tougher than what it might seem. The first two games at home are against well known foes: Purdue and Michigan. Visiting West Lafayette last year, Clausen and Kyle Rudolph pulled a victory in the last minute of play.

The visit to Ann Arbor was less rewarding as the Wolverines pulled the victory against Notre Dame in the last minute of play making evident what would be the worst problem for the 2009 Irish team: a porous defensive unit.

These two teams are going to be uncomfortable foes for an Irish team in transition. Rivals.com rank Purdue as their preseason team No. 62 and the Wolverines are at No. 41. Currently reviewing their team No. 34, they have not yet reviewed the Irish which surprise me a little.

Purdue might be a winnable game but Michigan, in the other hand, comes with an experienced, hungry for victory QB in Tate Forcier and a coach in dire need to have a winning season. Notre Dame has an excellent record on season opening games and I think this season will not be different and they will beat Purdue.

Michigan will beat the Irish one more time by a tight score as I feel the Wolverines should have assimilated more thoroughly Rich Rodriguez system by now.

On their third week Notre Dame will travel to East Lansing to face Michigan State. Again, Rivals.com preseason rankings place the Spartans as No. 47.

Visiting a 2-0 Spartan’s team at home will be an intimidating task for a young team in transition. To me it will not be surprising for the Irish to be beaten in East Lansing as it happened in the 2008 season.

The Cardinal visit South Bend. Jim Harbaugh can pull a victory as a visiting team as he is well known motivator and is capable to arm very competitive teams. The outcome of this game will rest in the defensive side of the ball and I believe Stanford has the hand here.

A trip to Chestnut Hill to face Boston College and a home game against Pittsburgh will mark the middle of the season and the Irish may well reach this point with a 1-5 or 2-4 record.

The second half of the season will include the games against Western Michigan, Tulsa and Army making the Irish record somehow better. Against Navy, the Irish will have an interesting game. If passion prevails this time, the Irish should beat the Midshipmen not without struggling or maybe overtime.

Utah Utes visit South Bend for the first time ever. It was not unusual for teams visiting South Bend for the first time to be a little bit startled but we have seen in recent years that this is no longer the case. Utah is a well coached team and will take a victory home to aid in gaining or securing a BCS bowl berth for Coach Whittingham.

The season will finish with a trip to L.A. to face perennial foe USC. As I have mentioned numerous times, a victory over USC will make the rest of the season not that miserable.

In 2009, Pete Carroll’s Trojans were vulnerable and Weis’s squad failed to obtain what could have been a season turning victory in South Bend.

Turmoil in L.A. along with changes resulting from Coach Carroll moving to the NFL make the Trojans vulnerable again but this time the game is at their home. It will not be the year for the Irish to beat the Trojans even when I would love to see that happen.

Brian Kelly path through his first season at South Bend will not be as glorious as Charlie Weis first season was. Not because Weis was better coach but because the spread offense takes some time to learn and adopt, and because the recruits from the previous system might not be suitable for this offensive scheme.

Obviously Brian Kelly is aware of these shortcomings. Presuming the Irish will go through similar adjustment phases as Michigan did under Rich Rodriguez, we can expect the Irish mid season record to be 2-4 and they might as well finish with a 5-7 or 6-6 record once again.

I am sure all Irish fans would love to see a Cincinnati-like restoration in Notre Dame and the Irish fighting for a BCS bid. For a beginning, I would love to see a team hungry to win and willing to show intensity in the field every Saturday.