Please take your ND blinders off and put down the ND Kool Aid. The whole purpose of any blog is for people to give their opinion, I could care less whether you agree with it or not. I don’t agree with every opinion here and obviously not everyone agrees with me; that’s OK. What’s not OK is you telling me if my opinion is different than yours it’s somehow irrelevant. What makes your opinion more relevant than mine or anyone else’s? Nothing. As a matter of fact, your manifesto shows how clueless you really are. Wasn’t Charlie Weis given an extension (even bigger than Kelly’s)? Wasn’t he the OC for some New England teams that won the Superbowl? How did that work out? Just because Kelly was given an extension or given an award doesn’t mean a damn thing. Does that mean he’s infallible? Every person who has a job is constantly under evaluation, it’s part of life. If you’re not doing the job properly then they find someone else. The head football coach at ND is no different. Most people who comment on this blog realize that we are not the decision maker in terms of his evaluation, but that does not mean we can’t have an opinion about his performance and it doesn’t mean we’re not right. I guess you’re one of those guys that feels everyone should get a trophy and schools should do away with grades because it may hurt someone’s feelings if someone else gets a better grade. I think the person with the inadequacy issues is you Mr. I’m a paper boy at a large newspaper. Who cares!!! Talk about irrelevant.

ND Chicago: the issue isn’t whether your or anybody else’s criticism is fair or valid. The bigger question is whether it’s relevant. Unless you have a pipeline into Jack Swarbrick and his evaluation of the the head coach then your after the fact criticism of decisions made on a few plays out of the 160 or so plays that take place in a football game are irrelevant, highly irrelevant as a matter of fact. Your motivation in writing, in all likelihood, is to feel good about your own acumen and/or impress others with your opinions. I would offer that very few people care, probably none that matter. One one hand we have self-appointed experts such as yourself and your irrelevant crticisms. On the other side of the coin you can include the ND administration who awarded Kelly with a 5 year extension on August 31st, the AP writers who voted him Coach of the Year in 2012 and Philadelphia Eagles who interviewed BK for an NFL head coaching position in January. I believe the perspective that escapes many is that if you dissect anyone’s performance, my own included (I am a Distribution Director for a large newsaper company) you can always find, especially after the fact, instances where their level of performance was not up to snuff and can be questioned. If you are someone who feels compelled to criticize somebody who is obviously at or near the top of his profession about the 8 or 10 pct part of his performance that didn’t meet whatever expectation, then you are probably trying to compensate for things in life that you feel inadequate about.

Fitz,
You are the man. You can watch an ND win and appreciate that the positives outweighed the negatives. I agree with everything you said.

You are going to be critical of Brindza by calling his missed FG attempt “the ugly”? 3 for 4 including a 53 yarder and a field position changing punt that limited ASU’s playbook and led to the interception sealing the deal. Your not so cute analogy of the Clint Eastwood classic would have us buy into 4 good things about ND’s play and 9 bad or ugly. Hardly the kind of perspective this game called for. Blame and whine. Blame and whine.

Quit whining, dude. I was at the game. Notre Dame was clearly the better team.

I also agree with the comment about GAIII not wanting contact, as there were a few times where we needed a couple of yards and the lanes up the middle were open for about that many yards, maybe a couple more. He would bounce to an outer gap or to the edge and meet up with a defender for no gain. To his credit, however, he did seem to do better at first contact in this game and actually kept his legs moving for some extra yards. He was decent overall, just not sharp on some of those “smart running” shorter yardage situations.

It was great seeing some pressure on the opposing QB finally, and Smith was great in pursuit. Without a mobile quarterback, however, the defenses we are facing are pinning their ears back and trying to collapse the pocket while stacking the box because they have no fear of Tommy running the ball and we don’t have any big stud receivers that demand double coverage, save for our tight ends who actually played quite well on Saturday both in the blocking game and passing game.

Well, he’s actually exactly right that Fox should have taken a knee. If he does then the game is over and we avoid the angst of the last minute. I don’t blame the kid for scoring, but you do end the game with a kneel down. Also, Farley was foolish to intercept rather than bat the ball down. He could have given us thirty yards more of field position and avoid the possibility of a fumble while he is foolishly running all over the field.

Besides the interceptions, where I agree it would be almost impossible to expect a player in the heat of battle to do something as against the grain as taking a knee, what criticism about the coaching was unfair? You don’t have to have coaching experience at the collegiate level to figure out that with less than a couple minutes left in the game, facing a third and long and the other team down to their last time out you run the ball and force them to use that last time out. (We’ll never know if that would have mattered because Fox let Kelly off the hook by intercepting the ball a couple plays later.) Instead, Kelly called for a pass that fell incomplete which allowed them to preserve the time out and stop the clock. Again, it comes back to putting Rees and, more importantly, the team in a position to succeed; that’s what coaching is all about. Rees is not the type of QB who you want throwing the ball forty times a game, it’s asking for trouble and consistently leads to him turning the ball over so why in the world have him throw in such a crucial situation? He had already thrown one int returned for a TD, why risk the game by throwing it in that situation? Why not run the ball, force ASU to use their last time out, and put the game in the hands of your defense which had played pretty well up to that point? Also, why is McDaniel not starting? He’s the only kid who has shown any consistency and produces when he’s given carries. I see the potential of GAIII and Carlisle just like everyone else, but they’ve been given more opportunities than McDaniel and haven’t done anything (besides GAIII’s big game against OK). Everyone who comments on this blog wants to see ND back in the NCG and competing for championships, but when a coach (no matter who) consistently makes bad decisions you better believe he’s going to get criticized. Some of the same coaching blunders that have occurred this year happened last year, but winning is a great deodorant so it wasn’t talked about as much. I’m always happy when ND wins, but let’s not pretend ND football is back to a level they were under Holtz which is what we’ve all been waiting for the last 15-20 years.

Agree. Is Kelly calling the plays or the OC?

This Irish team continues to disappoint. Rees continues to show his massive ability to panic and throw interceptions. The defense vanished in the last few minutes of the game and was intermittently present during the rest of it.

Whoever called the pass play on 3rd down at the end of the game should be fired. Memories of the loss to Tulsa (where we eschewed the certainty of a win via field goal vs a stupid pass play the guaranteed a loss) flashed through my brain when they ran that idiotic play against ASU.

The only bright spot is the performance of Cam McDaniel. He actually WANTS to win and sacrifices himself on every play to accomplish this. The rest of the team just doesn’t seem to be motivated in the same way.