Tag: Kelly

It appears Jack Coan to start for Notre Dame at Virginia Tech

Like it, love it, or hate it?

I have nothing against Jack Coan.

His teammates at Wisconsin clearly looked at him as a leader and you haven’t heard any Notre Dame players say a bad word about him. Clearly Notre Dame’s coaching staff thinks highly of him seeing as he received another start at Virginia Tech.

I really hope the best for Notre Dame over the next few hours and that Coan plays the game of the year in Blacksburg. I hope this entire post gets sent to the Old Takes Exposed Twitter account and a mockery is made of this.

Reporters at the game in Blacksburg, Virginia have indicated that it appears the transfer graduate-senior will start the game for Notre Dame.  

But for the life of me I don’t understand how Brian Kelly, Tommy Rees, and the rest of the Notre Dame coaching staff came to conclusion that Coan gives Notre Dame their best chance to win at Virginia Tech.

The Hokies aren’t likely to light up the scoreboard as their offense has struggled. They likely won’t be great at slowing down the run, either.

What you can expect them to do is get after Notre Dame’s quarterbacks as the Irish line has issues and Coan doesn’t exactly offer escapability.

Based on Virginia Tech’s strengths and weaknesses it would appear obvious that either Drew Pyne or Tyler Buchner would make significantly more sense of the mission of the night is for the offense to give you a better chance to win. I’ve stated I’d go with Pyne in part because of the way you see the rest of the offense seemingly get a spark when he’s on the field.

Is a loud road environment that much of a reason to not start the significantly less experienced Pyne or Buchner? One of them will have to start in the 2022 opener at Ohio State, right? On top of them being better built to face the Virginia Tech defense was that at all considered?

This isn’t meant as a post to knock Jack Coan. It’s not his fault he isn’t built to move like the other quarterbacks are.

I just don’t get how something that myself and so many other Notre Dame observers thought was so obvious and necessary was avoided.

Good luck tonight to the Notre Dame defense and special teams because unfortunately without a big few plays from them I really don’t like the Irish chances to score much whatsoever.

Now please go prove my big mouth wrong, Jack.

Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. ET tonight and can be seen on ACC Network.

Related:

ESPN FPI projects Notre Dame-Virginia Tech winner

Brian Kelly’s final quarterback comments before Virginia Tech game

Notre Dame releases hype tape for Virginia Tech game

Notre Dame releases first depth chart for Virginia Tech game

College football experts make Notre Dame vs. Virginia Tech predictions

Notre Dame loses wide receiver for rest of season

Tale of the Tape: Starting Quarterbacks in Notre Dame vs. Virginia Tech

Tale of the Tape: Starting Running Backs in Notre Dame vs. Virginia Tech

Notre Dame vs. Virginia Tech: All-time head-to-head results

Cincinnati trolls Brian Kelly hard after win at Notre Dame

Cincinnati recorded perhaps their biggest win in program history Saturday and took to Twitter to celebrate it over their former head coach.

Through playing youth, high school, and college sports I don’t know how many times I heard a coach say “act like you’ve been there before”.

I really hope that none of those coaches follow the Cincinnati athletic department on Twitter, otherwise Saturday evening was probably very difficult for them whether they’re Notre Dame fans or not.

After beating No. 9 Notre Dame 24-13, No. 7 Cincinnati had a field day with Notre Dame and head coach Brian Kelly on Twitter.  It started with a spliced together video of Kelly at Cincinnati that clearly took a good amount of time to research and put together.

But the Bearcats weren’t done there.  They continued on by giving it right back to the Irish for a tweet the Notre Dame football program put out earlier in the week.

And they then closed with a polite thank you to Brian Kelly for helping get the Bearcats a game on Notre Dame’s schedule.

If you want to be upset, go ahead and be.  If it’s over nothing of ultimate significance then I hate telling people how to feel or being told by someone how to feel.

They just had their biggest win in program history and put there program seemingly on a level they haven’t been before and it just so happened to come against their former head coach.

The end result is a rough one if you’re a Notre Dame fan but good for Cincinnati.  If the Irish are going to embrace being the villain then they’ve got to be willing to take it when things get thrown back at them.

And for acting like they’ve been there before?

Save it, they haven’t!  Life is too stinking short to let this bother you.  Be more upset about the fact Tyler Buchner was brought into the game on 1st-and-10 at the Cincinnati 35 with 9:20 to play in the third quarter.

Related:

Notre Dame falls to No. 7 Cincinnati:  5 instant takeaways

5 Stars: best and worst of Notre Dame’s home loss to Cincinnati

 

How to watch Notre Dame vs. Cincinnati

How to watch Notre Dame, the underdog, on Saturday.

Notre Dame has perhaps their toughest opponent of the 2021 season coming to South Bend Saturday as it’ll be a battle of top-10 teams when Cincinnati arrives for perhaps the biggest game in their program’s history.

Don’t miss any of the action as the Irish return to their home turf and to NBC on television.  See the TV details below:

Date: Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021
Time: 2:30 p.m. ET
TV: NBC
Livestream: fuboTV (try it free)

Notre Dame is looking to move to 5-0 ahead of a trip to Virginia Tech next week.

Related:

FIW Staff Predictions for Notre Dame-Cincinnati

Notre Dame releases depth chart for test with No. 8 Cincinnati

Gallery – Brian Kelly during his time at Cincinnati

5 things Luke Fickell said ahead of Notre Dame-Cincinnati

How college football experts are predicting Notre Dame-Cincinnati showdown

No. 7 Notre Dame’s depth chart ahead of No. 8 Cincinnati

What are your initial thoughts about the showdown with Cincinnati?

No. 8 Notre Dame faced their toughest opponent to date Saturday as a fourth quarter blitz gave the Irish a 41-13 victory over Wisconsin.  Things don’t get any easier this week as a No. 8 Cincinnati team with dreams of crashing the College Football Playoff party are headed to South Bend.

Here is the depth chart Notre Dame released on Monday ahead of the showdown with a few things of note.

Notre Dame Wisconsin: 5 instant takeaways

What is your biggest takeaway from today’s HUGE WIN? #NDFB

No. 12 Notre Dame entered Saturday as a nearly touchdown underdog against No. 18 Wisconsin but walked out victorious after a dominating defensive performance and some heroics from a speedster wearing No. 25 and a backup quarterback.

With the 41-13 win that Wisconsin actually led at one point of the fourth quarter, Brian Kelly became the winningest head coach in the history of Notre Dame football, passing Knute Rockne.

What were the biggest takeaways from Saturday’s impressive win that came despite many obstacles?

What they’re saying: Brian Kelly after Thursday’s practice

What has been your biggest takeaway from this fall camp?

We’re just over two weeks away from Notre Dame stepping on a plane and heading to Tallahassee to open the 2021 football season at Florida State.

Are the Irish ready and what still needs fine-tuned before kickoff the first Sunday night of September?

Head coach Brian Kelly met the media following Thursday’s practice and updated the masses on everything related to Notre Dame football.  Here is everything the head coach had to say:

Notre Dame to test players weekly during season for COVID-19

Brian Kelly shared the news that Notre Dame will test all football players for COVID-19 weekly this fall.

Brian Kelly joined Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter on Monday night and spoke about the upcoming football season.  There were several topics covered in a very short amount of time but Kelly broke some news in terms of Notre Dame’s plans to test their student-athletes for COVID-19.

“There’s going to be testing weekly throughout the season,” Kelly said, “cleared and tested prior to competition and part of the challenge will be the players making good decisions during the week because the last thing we want is to get on the bus to go play Clemson and to find out the starting quarterback is out because he tested positive”

Some reports have teams relying more on simply taking players temperatures more often instead of testing their athletes each week, but Notre Dame appears to have a plan in place to make sure nobody taking the field on Saturday’s will be playing with COVID-19.

There’s a long way to go before any guarantees for games to be played but it’s tough to have a better or more definitive plan than Notre Dame will have testing all players each week.

Notre Dame: Fighting Irish Wire Daily/Weekend Recap (Edition 3)

Miss any Notre Dame news over the weekend? Catch up with the latest on all of it right here, right now!

In case you missed anything that happened with Notre Dame athletics this weekend then you’ve come to the right place as we recap you as quickly as possible right here.

There were no actual games played but the Notre Dame Athletics Page on YouTube live-streamed a replay of the 1993 win over Florida State while some heroes from that day offered commentary.  It brought back some great memories which I shared here.  If you’re interested, Notre Dame has released the entire 1993 home season as well, so if you’re bored just pull up this site and whatever you do, just make sure you don’t click on the Boston College game.

Is it still “too early” to give your pre-season rankings?  We found one outlet who officially declared it “Not Too Early” so we examined them, their formula and were surprised by how far another mid-west team ranked ahead of everyone else.

There was some recruiting news of note over the weekend as a pair of players included Notre Dame in their lists after making cuts of perspective schools.  Brock Bowers and Dont’e Thornton both did just that, click their names to learn more about each.  In basketball, a key transfer has Notre Dame on his remaining schools list after cutting things down on Friday.

Rivals updated their rankings for the 2022 class over the weekend and you can check out where some Notre Dame targets rank in those.

And finally for fun – our inagural FIW Tournament has come and gone as we’ve crowned the best Notre Dame football game since 1986.  The winner isn’t a surprise but the guy you see throw out the first pitch in the video included may be.

Plenty to come on Monday so keep checking out FIW throughout the day.  I hope everyone had a great weekend.

James Franklin Extended at Penn State: Who’d You Rather?

Since taking the Penn State job in 2014 he’s returned the Nittany Lions to glory, winning the Big Ten in 2016 before falling in the Rose Bowl to USC. What about Kelly?

News came down Friday that Penn State head football coach James Franklin has been extended through 2025, putting an end to rumors he’d end up at Florida State.

That got me wondering about where Brian Kelly ranks in terms of all college football coaches.

If Saban is the GOAT and Dabo Swinney is the next best thing going, how far down would you have to go in order to find Brian Kelly?

James Franklin took a program that was awful before and has again turned south since his departure into a pretty respectable team in his time at Vanderbilt.

Since taking the Penn State job in 2014 he’s returned the Nittany Lions to glory, winning the Big Ten in 2016 before falling in the Rose Bowl to USC.

He’s gone 55-23 overall since 2014 but 44-11 in his four years Penn State has played without any scholarship restrictions.

Residing in the Big Ten East is no simple life as Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan sit in your division and provide top-tier competition on an annual basis (OK, perhaps not Michigan State).

It gets me wondering though, which coach would you rather have if I were to give five years with each at the helm?

Brian Kelly took advantage of a generous schedule by year-three and had Notre Dame playing in (and getting blown out in) the national championship his third year on campus. Year-nine saw Kelly take Notre Dame to the College Football Playoff where eventual national champion Clemson routed them, 30-3.

Franklin has won at Penn State and in his first year without scholarship restrictions won the Big Ten. However, he hasn’t done so again and despite having a top-ten team this season, is yet to get back to that second Rose Bowl appearance.

I’m curious which coach you’d rather have going forward.

Brian Kelly appears to have an elite recruiting class taking shape for 2021, 11 years into his run.

Franklin again won ten games in one of college football’s best divisions and seems to have Penn State on a level they haven’t been at with any consistency since the nineties.

It’s a tough to make a choice and both coaches bring plenty of off-the-field drama with them.

But gun to my head, Kelly has shown an ability to hire quality assistants on the regular who often take head jobs elsewhere and find the next up-and-comer in the coaching ranks regularly.

That’s something Franklin is yet to show, as he has watched only Joe Moorhead leave, taking the Mississippi State job previous to 2018.

Although a longer tenure, Kelly has seen Chuck Martin, Matt LaFleur, Butch Jones, Bob Diaco and Autry Denson take head jobs elsewhere after being his assistants at various points the last decade or so.

The ability to hire quality assistants is so important to me and if Kelly keeps seeing assistants get head-jobs, it must mean he’s doing something right.

James Franklin is a very good college football coach and worthy of every dime he gets from Penn State.

But even if you complain about Brian Kelly on the regular, would you take Franklin over him given the chance?

At very worst that question is harder than you’d like to admit while truthfully, Kelly’s resume at Notre Dame is incredibly-difficult to compete with unless you’ve actually won a national championship.

Franklin’s extension at Penn State and the desire of other premier programs to hire him should make you appreciate Brian Kelly as a coach a bit more, even if you’re not entirely in love with him.