The Charlie Weis Era was a forgettable one, after posting 9 then 10 wins in his first two seasons at the helm of the Irish seemed to be going in the right direction, but then a 3-9 season followed up by 7 and 6 wins seasons did Weis in. His firing led Notre Dame to hire Brian Kelly from Cincinnati and ESPN thought that the hire was the 13th best in the last 25 years.
Kelly, according to Adam Rittenberg, “created the type of stability Notre Dame struggle to achieve after Lou Holtz left town…. A two-time AP national coach of the year, Kelly doesn’t dance around Notre Dame’s national championship ambitions and knows there’s work to do there. But he has put the program in a position to challenge the nation’s best.”
Similar to Weis, Kelly had a very down year during his tenure as the head coach in 2016 when the Irish went 4-8, but Kelly’s rebound since that year makes the ’16 season look like a blip in the radar. That was a “disastrous season, Kelly made important changes to the staff and how he runs the program,” Rittenberg stated. Since then, the Irish have accumulated a 33-6 record, more along the lines of what fans expected when Kelly was hired in 2009.
Kelly has done a fantastic job as the Notre Dame head coach, as it takes time to build a program and sometimes a year like in 2016 needs to happen in order to self-analyze and make positive changes going forward. Those changes have seemed to work, with the Irish headed in the right direction. Kelly has focused on the programs consistency, something that only time can bring and he is close to getting the Irish into the elite of college football.