I just scanned Tillery's twitter feed. I read his reddit Q&A which you can read here: http://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/1pnhz3/i_am_jerry_tillery_ama/ I've just never gotten that feeling that the kid is going anywhere but ND. He's hopped to a couple of LSU games and all that, but that just seems like a kid enjoying the process that he won't get again in his life. They have a big playoff game this week involving 2 ND commits (Tillery and Bo Wallace).
Well as we come to the close on Kelly's year 5, it's been an interesting run. He's been a polarizing coach since before he was tabbed as the ND Coach. There were a lot of people who felt he wasn't up to it, that his record was all "Small Timey" and that his offense was an abomination of what a ND coach should bring. Read that as QB under center, fullback, and TB in the I formation. Power running, Notre Dame style. None of that GAS (Gay Ass Spread). Up through the last game Kelly still irriatated the crap out of a lot of ND fans for not running the ball more, speculation was he never had the team really practice running plays. He wanted his nifty passing game to work. When he first came he had an injured QB for a starter and virtually nobody behind him as a backup. If you remember when Dayne Crist went down in the Mich game in 2010 it was Nate Montana and Tommy (who?) Rees to the rescue. If you remember Tommy's first pass was a int. Nate was so bad Kelly had to go back to Tommy. If Dayne hadn't been hurt in the 1st qtr, I think Kelly beats Mich. Then Declan Sullivan dies in a tragic accident, and we lose to Tulsa when all Kelly had to do was kick a FG and game was over. Instead he had Tommy the true freshman whose 1st pass was a pick, throw a fade route in the endzon. INT and game over we lose to Tulsa. Dayne Crist is starting to lose Kelly's trust for some reason. Oh yeah he got beat on a fake FG in the MSU game when the B10 refs let MSU kick the tying FG after the clock had run out and they should have been penalized for delay of game. He lost to Navy when Bob Diaco couldn't figure out what to do with that darn Navy offense. But he gets on a run and we win the Sun Bowl. Now we're pretty excited for 2011, Tommy is back!! Then 2011 starts with a bang a ignomious loss to South Fla, Dayne Crist won the job as the starter and played horribly and had to be bailed out by Rees who almost pulls the game out. But Crist virtually never plays again and transfers. Some Irish fans think Crist got a screw job by Kelly. Then we go to Mich and virtually every bounce goes UM's way that day. Tommy fumbles in the redzone, Shoelaces fumbles in the redzone and it bounces back up to him and he scores. Tommy salts away the victory all we have to do is play prevent defense against a QB who basically throws the ball up for grabs but our defense can't find it and they win. How did we lose that game? Rest of the season is the usual he beats Navy soundly, he loses to USC, he loses to Stanford and he has FSU beat in the bowl game but he lets them off the hook when Diaco goes conservative, letting EJ Manuel get some rhythm. A lot of booing of Tommy Rees happens during the year, cursing of Tommy Rees, and of course lamenting the lack of commitment to a running game. 2012...everything goes right for Kelly finally...he had a mobile QB with a strong arm in Golson and Tommy to back him up when needed. Diaco has a shutdown defense that every time the offense fumbles or throws a pick in their end of the field that defense forces FG's. gives up very few TD's. Goal Line Stand vs Stanford is the signature win. Manti'Te'o is a rock star. Then it all falls apart when it turns out he's not a rock star he's a sucker. Alabama is the better team, unlike in 2009 when they weren't...but the Te'o thing had to be a terrible distraction for the team..those guys had to know what Manti' was going to go through. Then Kelly disappears for 3 or 4 days while he decides whether or not he wants to go to the NFL. That colors fans perceptions that maybe he was more worried about the NFL than prepraring the team for the Championship Game. Left a bad taste in my mouth for sure. 2013...ok we should have a really excellent year, we have Golson as an experienced Soph, we have DaVarius Daniels as a rising WR, Tory Nikklas, Cierre Wood would be back, a couple of young hot shot freshmen would be arriving on campus at RB and then finally of course GAIII would no doubt finally be the RB everybody wanted him to be. No Manti Te'o of course but Jarrett Grace is a rising star. Defense would be sound no doubt with Nix and Tuitt coming back. Oh wait, his crappy luck surfaces again....Golson gone! Daniels Gone, GAIII never gets it, Cierre Wood lacks faith that Kelly will give him the ball and decides now is the time to go to the NFL. Louis Nix is never healthy, Stephon Tuitt never was the player he was in 2012 due to offseason surgery that either he never recovered from adequately or that our training and nutrition staff are so bad they let him get fat and out of shape and he was a shell of the player we thought he'd be....Jarrett Grace...broke his leg. Oh and our defense was the only defense all year who couldn't figure out Devin Gardner. We lose again to Michigan, we lose to Pitt in a most frustrating manner, we do beat USC when it turns out neither team has a QB in the 2nd half. Tommy has a year where he sets records but people hate him for it. Again there is no backup for Tommy it's him or Hendrix who if you watched him vs USC you went my god that kid is a terrible QB. So that brings us to this year, where we are young but have a lot of good young players, nobody really thinks we'll be in the playoffs but a top 10 or top 15 season seems reasonable. Our OL is young but talented, after all we have HH as our OL coach and those young running backs esp Folston showed some stuff late last year. WE'RE FINALLY GOING TO RUN THE DAMN FOOTBALL, EVEN THAT WHITE BOY FROM TEXAS IS PRETTY GOOD AND JUST WAIT TILL YOU SEE GREG BRYANT HE MIGHT BE THE BEST OF ALL. COULD BE A GREAT YEAR!! Oh wait destiny strikes again, 3 starters are lost due to academics and a backup player who would have contributed also lost. Jarrett Grace, Manti' Te'o replacement who showed promise in 2013 before he leg injury. NEVER plays a down, he's replaced by a walkon from So.Cal named Joe Schmidt who becomes the story of the season. He's counting of guys like Austin Collinsworth and Nicki Barratti to be big contributors on defense...Barratti may never play again although he says he will, Austin Collinsworth who will start this weekend is not the same player he was at the begining of the season. But some how we play our way into the playoff conversation only to be screwed by the refs at FSU and then just stink up the joint vs Navy followed by stinking up the joint vs ASU and then another stink job vs Northwestern. Along the way the defense becomes freshmen and backups who can't stop anybody. The offense which started the year as an efficient machine becomes a turnover machine. At this point pretty much everything Kelly says or does irritates the crap out of a lot of the ND fanbase and they alternately want him to take the UF job or go to the NFL so we can bring in a coach like Bob Stoops who will finally run the damn football!! Along the way I've missed the whole Kelly guys vs Weis guys blowups, the fact that many blame Kelly for why we have fake grass in ND Stadium. The now famous comment after the Tulsa loss when asked if now wishes he'd kicked the FG,....no that's the way we roll, get used to it. Which leads us to the Northwestern loss where he wasn't the guy fumbling but he was the guy who decided to go for 2 when he didn't need to and he was the guy who decided that a backup QB who hasn't held for the kicker in his whole career at ND is now the guy. Granted the guy who was doing the holding was struggling. But the new guy who since he's the backup QB had little time to practice his holding skills, chokes on an extra point that is run back for 2 points...which turns out to be the key play of the game. We kick 2 extra points we win, it never goes to OT. The insiders want Kelly back, feel with the team we have coming back next year and the way recruiting has been going that we need him to come back have a great season and then adios..go to the NFL and lets get a new coach who will run the damn football. Sorry about the rant.
Sorry, Terry. My Skybox reading skills are limited to three paragraphs, so I picked the first and the last two. Wait a minute......You mean that the 2 pt. TD on the fumbled PAT was the reason for the loss? I thought it was Kelly's decision to go for two. Now which is it? Were there any other plays in the game that affected the final score? I'm really corn-fused. I don't know what to believe. There were so many people blaming the loss only on Kelly's decision. Now I read that there was another "only" reason for the loss. Woe is me! I know there were other plays in the game before and after the two aforementioned mistakes, but apparently they didn't matter. Pray tell, who are the insiders? Are they the wisest of the fans? What makes them the wisest? Are they insiders because they've been expressing their opinions louder and longer than anyone else? Just who are these people? Whoever they are, they remind me of voices I've been hearing for over 50 years. Before the internet, I only heard them in the stands, where I occasionally would tell them to shut up (especially when one or more of my kids were with me) and be ready to defend myself. Funny thing, no one ever called me on it. Why? Because they had big mouths but no substance. Since the arrival of the internet, these voices have turned to their keyboards to shout their opinions. It's much safer that way, and they can say anything they want to say with almost total impunity. They haven't changed. Still the same big mouths and no substance, only now the noise is in the printed word. I guess these voices will never go away, but they cannot change the fact that Notre Dame football is sacred. Nothing about the way we win or lose, ugly or pretty, by a lot or by a little, affects the sacredness of Notre Dame football. Oh.....almost forgot......the "insiders" can go to hell.
I wasn't even drinking AJ!! Maybe we can hire Bo away from Neb, at least he'll run the damn football!!
These officials are horse ****. Golson has been horse ****. The defense is showing signs of life. We just got a great punt return. The team is showing signs of life in spite of their QB who is clearly playing with confidence issues. I'm basically posting this for documentation purposes. Also, I wanna come back and bitch about that call later on (kick catch interference).
FYI, throwing down the challenge on Flutie the expert. That's twice he praised Louisville's short yardage blocking scheme, but then the replay showed that our defense fanned the blocking scheme and Morgan filled the wrong hole running into the back of a tied up OL. We really miss Schmidt.
Just like the ASU game, as soon as we got back in this game the D starts giving up yds by chunks. Their tackling is terrible.
there's no senior leadership on the defense. The tackling has been bad, but who is out there tackling? Morgan is absolutely killing us by taking bad angles and making wrong reads. You can see he's a great athlete and I'm sure he'll be a good one but this is a case and point example of why the premier athletes aren't ready out of high school. Sure, you can sprinkle them in but when you're relying on an entire recruiting class to carry the unit, you're in trouble.
hahaha the problem is that Morgan is busy tying the shoe laces of the strong side guard on a weak side toss sweep
the good news is that we just took out the guy who Louisville has picked on all day. The bad news is obvious...
ha! Well, I guess there's not a lot to say about this. (actually, there is) This was a team that was supposed to be carried by the offense. The defense started as a nice surprise but became so gutted by injuries that they're playing a high school defense at the end of most games. We're now replacing injured (or ejected) true freshman with other true freshman. I know the blowhards on NDN will say 'everyone has freshman' but not like we do. 2 weeks ago, we were the youngest starting 22 and we've lost A LOT more on defense since then. The offense has failed this team. The play calling, even when we're winning, is something we all bitch about, or at least wonder aloud about. The personnel decisions, or lack thereof, cause equal levels of head scratching. We are what we are, horse ****. In related news, Ole Miss got BOMBED today (I watched both games) and the Egg Bowl looks like a bowl of chicken **** now.