Notre Dame Football: Have Brian Kelly's Comments Motivated the Irish?

When searching for a word to describe Notre Dame’s performance against USC in Week 8, words like lackluster and dull quickly come to mind.

If you watched the Irish on that Saturday night against their rivals from the West Coast, you not only saw a team that repeatedly made critical mistakes on both sides of the ball, you saw a team that seemed to unforgivably lack passion in its biggest spotlight game of the season.

You saw lazy route-running, bad blocking, shaky decision-making and effortless tackling technique.

Notre Dame’s overall performance that night simply left everyone in the stadium shaking their head.

Where was the motivation?

Where was the fire?

Where was the supposed heart of a champion?

Those were all valid questions.

The week following the loss to the Trojans, coach Brian Kelly came out and made some inflammatory public comments to the media that seemed to anger many of the upperclassmen on the team.

Kelly talked about how the players he had recruited were coming along faster than the holdovers from the Charlie Weis era, and how the older players had to step it up.

Judging from the response and messages from some veteran players on Twitter and reports of players who were up in arms behind the scenes, Kelly’s comments definitely got a reaction, but whether it was the one he was looking for is something only he knows.

During a team meeting last Friday before the Navy game, some players voiced their disapproval and Kelly reportedly apologized for the comments he made in this story. 

The following day, Kelly’s players finally came out and played with the fire and intensity that many had been waiting to see out of them all year, as the Irish went out and dominated Navy, 56-14.

If Kelly was indeed using a motivational tactic to get his older players to play with some anger and passion, then it seems to have worked.

Now we'll have to see if the 5-3 Irish can maintain it for the final five weeks of the season, starting Saturday at Wake Forest, as they look to work their way back to respectability.

By season’s end, we’ll probably look back on the Navy week as one of the defining moments of a season that was clearly on the brink.

Whether Kelly’s strategy pays dividends for more than just a week remains to be seen but it obviously had an effect on this team, and it’s one that we’ll look back on as either positive or negative depending upon the outcome of the final four regular season games.

Even though there are certainly times when Kelly sounds pompous and just flat-out rude, maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what he's hoping for.

Kelly certainly knows how to ruffle some feathers, but every now and then, feathers just need to be ruffled, and the head coach is obviously well aware of that.