Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly wants you to believe he is a changed man, a changed coach as he prepares for the 2017 season. This year, Kelly says he is aiming to relaunch the Notre Dame football program after a dismal, but not forgotten, 4-8 season a year ago.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Kelly used a baseball analogy to explain how he is approaching the 2017 season in South Bend.
“I use the analogy, if you’re a really good hitter and you’re in the major leagues and you have one year when you fall below, you make a couple of adjustments, you take some BP, you have a good offseason and you start hitting again,” Kelly said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m going to hit again. I know how to coach.”
So how has Kelly “relaunched” the Irish? With a bit of a makeover in the offseason. Notre Dame hired 14 new coaches since the end of last season to help with on-field production and work in the weight room. Notre Dame has to get stronger in order to compete at a high level. That was made clear for the world to see a few years back against Alabama in the BCS Championship Game. Despite running through the regular season without a loss, the No. 1 Irish were no match for Alabama as the Crimson Tide steamrolled their way past the Irish for the national championship.
Since that championship game experience, Kelly has learned a few things about building his roster. Not only does it need to be faster and more athletic, but it needs to be stronger too. The steps of progress have been there for Notre Dame in adapting the roster, but things simply have not gone quite according to plan for Kelly, and he’s been running out of excuses.
“When you change your own role you have a different relationship with the players,” Kelly said. “Whereas I was maybe more of the hammer, if you will, when it came to our players, I have set that up within our program where the level of accountability is being shared by everybody. And so I don’t have to be that guy that is the heavy on every single player.”
Kelly is saying all the things you would like to hear if you are a Notre Dame fan, but for now it’s just preseason fluff. We’ll see how Kelly handles things when the pressure is on in the fall. If he truly has changed his approach, the results may show in the win column. But for now, this is nothing more than a PR blitz to suggest last season was nothing to worry about for the Irish.
