Notre Dame Football: What Will It Take for Brian Kelly to Quiet His Critics?

Now that Notre Dame has pushed its record up to a respectable 7-3, the heat on head coach Brian Kelly has seemed to die down a little bit in recent weeks, especially from that thermostat-cracking heat that Kelly felt after the USC loss.

Kelly faced a backlash from many Notre Dame fans for the team’s disappointing 0-2 start, but now that Kelly’s guided the Irish back into the polls for the first time since Week 1, his critics have calmed and their rage has transformed from anger into skepticism.

Once again, the second-year head coach proved that he can rally his team in the face of adversity and lead them to success during the stretch run of the season, but you can only survive starting off slow and finishing off strong for so long before fans grow wary of that kind of inconsistency.

If Kelly truly wants to win over the Notre Dame faithful and quiet his doubters, he has to put a full season together first.

2012 is shaping up to be a very important year for Kelly and the Irish, some may say it’s even a make-or-break kind of year for the coach, and a third straight slow start definitely won’t endear him to fans.

With so much talent returning, expectations were high going into this season, as Notre Dame entered the year with 17 returning starters and a top 20 national ranking. But even if the Irish can win out and finish with a double-digit win campaign, the feeling will still remain that this team was capable of doing more.

Turnovers and self-inflicted mistakes were really what damaged this Irish the most in their three losses this year, and that's a direct reflection on the coaching staff and their preparation methods.

A coach may not be able to control how well his team performs in a given game, but he can control how he motivates his players. He can control whether or not he puts them in the proper position to succeed. And there were times this season when Kelly showed that he could do neither.

Without Michael Floyd, nearly the entire secondary, and possibly Manti Te’o, we’ll really get to see what Kelly’s really made of next season.

Is the Theo Riddick-Tyler Eifert receiving tag team going to be enough?

Is Deontay Greenbery going to come in and be a star?

Does Tommy Rees have the talent to take this team to the next level?

Should we buy into the Cierre Wood hype?

Will “Kelly’s guys” really be better than the old guard?

There’s a lot that has to be answered next year, but the main question is, can Kelly keep this team motivated and focused for a full season?

The "Let’s start off slow, and then beat some mediocre teams down the stretch to make our record look respectable" strategy's not going to work anymore

Eight-win seasons only cut it for so long at Notre Dame.

Ask Charlie.

Ask Ty.

They both know that bringing in the great talent is only going to get you so far. If you don’t eventually get the wins out of that talent, it won’t matter.

Kelly’s got his guys now, and if he wants to shut his critics up, he better start to win with them.