Notre Dame is Incomprehensibly Bad—Should They Fire Brian Kelly?

You can't completely fault Notre Dame for losing a game in hurricane. Maybe, on a normal day, things go the Irish's way, and they beat NC State. But that's not going to console Notre Dame fans now that a once-promising season has turned into a 2-4 nightmare, with losses to three mediocre teams (NC State, Texas and Michigan State) and a bad one (Duke).

Coach Brian Kelly has already fired defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder, but with the Irish in serious danger of missing a bowl game despite all of their talent, one has to wonder whether Kelly is on the hot seat, too.

This isn't a quick, emotional reaction. Notre Dame legitimately had enough talent to make the College Football Playoff this year. The Irish have a future first round draft pick at quarterback in DeShone Kizer, a young stable of top wide receivers and a talented, if inexperienced defense. Morons like yours truly thought this team had enough to be even better than last year's team, which made the New Year's Six bowls despite losing 19 different defenders to injury.

Maybe the defense wasn't experienced enough to win that big this year. Maybe the offense would just catch some unlucky breaks. Maybe the offensive line wouldn't gel like it needed to. But even knowing all of that, Notre Dame should not lose to NC State, Texas, or Duke, much less all three of them. So how did it happen? A lot of it boils down to coaching.

The Irish likely would have beaten Texas had they not flip-flopped between Kizer and Malik Zaire, despite Kizer being clearly superior in that game. Zaire played into the second half, despite going just two-for-five for 23 yards, while Kizer passed for 215 yards and five touchdowns.

Against a mediocre Michigan State offense and a terrible Duke offense, it was the defense's turn to stink it up. Duke is averaging just 5.45 yards per play this year but averaged 6.73 against Notre Dame — better than it played against North Carolina Central (6.01 YPP). Michigan State, averaging 5.76 yards per play on the year, played better against Notre Dame (6.42 YPP) than it did against Furman (6.22 YPP). Those games got VanGorder fired.

In this week's loss, it wasn't that the Irish couldn't move the ball in a hurricane — that's expected — but rather, the coaches didn't put the Irish in a good position to win. The Irish had a whopping 26 passes (again, in a dang hurricane) and kept trying to throw, even when that was clearly not going to work. They called more pass plays, but a number of those plays never materialized. NC State, on the other hand, had just 14 passes. That's Notre Dame turning already tough conditions into the toughest task possible.

So the question becomes, even after last year's impressive finish, will the Irish hand Kelly a pink slip? Kelly can clearly be a good coach, and he retooled his offense to fit multiple offensive schemes, be it the run-heavy scheme with Everett Golson to the air-it-out scheme with Kizer. His offensive coordinator, Mike Sanford, is an up-and-coming star.

But this year, Kelly has miserably failed in his coaching duties, almost to an unfathomable degree. There is evidence that he has the ability turn the Irish around next season, so perhaps the school will keep him around. But after such a failure of a season, you can't blame Notre Dame too much if it pulls the plug.