In his 12th season, Kelly had just two players drafted. Not a great result for a "top" HC.

Hard to compete without recruiting and developing talent. Ultimately, that is on the HC.

 

 

Edited May 2, 20222 yr by jbrown_9999

4 minutes ago, jbrown_9999 said:

In his 12 season, Kelly had just two players drafted. Not a great result for a "top" HC.

Hard to compete without recruiting and developing talent. Ultimately, that is on the HC.

 

 

Confused. He’s had more than 2 players drafted. Maybe not high,  but they were drafted. I can name three just off the top of my head. 
Williams, Boykin, Claypool, Adam’s etc. 

Yeah, that’s just factually inaccurate.

in 2016 , we had 2 in the first round alone: Ronnie Stanley and Will Fuller.  There were others that year, too. We had 8 players drafted last year.

By my count we’ve had over 50 in that time.

I think he’s saying that in Kelly’s 12th season we had only 2 players drafted. I kind of agree thought the draft was a little weak and glad we have Marcus

Edited May 1, 20222 yr by nd1989

ah.  That makes sense.

 I’m still very happy with Coach Freeman.

The 2022 NFL draft was one of the weakest showings for Notre Dame under Brian Kelley since 2017, and with the 2016 regular season being his worst ever ending in a 4-8 record, it makes sense.

With the 2021 regular season ending at 11-1, and with a chance to still make the playoff, it doesn’t make sense.  However, it has to make you wonder; did it have to do with the way Kelly left Notre Dame to take the LSU job, and all the drama that followed him and Notre Dame after, that it left a bad taste in every NFL teams mouth?  I’m sure the bowl game loss didn’t help either.  With that being said, I believe all of this is what likely caused every draft prospect, besides Hamilton and Williams, to slide out of the draft entirely.

Let’s be serious, Notre Dame should have had at lest five players drafted in 2022, and not just two.

Who really knows, and maybe I’m way off here, but that’s the way I see it.

I don't think their results matter as much with the draft.  Scouts analyze every bit of film on these kids and their measurable, not how much what's going on with the team itself.

Looking at some of the schools with kids drafted, you see small schools like Lenoir-Rhyne, Fordham, Southern, etc. plus several schools that had pretty underwhelming years: Rutgers, UCLA, etc.

This has more to do with how well they think the kids' skills translate to the NFL and how they can help a roster.

I agree that they should of had more than two in any year.  But let’s not forget some guys came back. Patterson and Foskey would had been drafted. Maybe the Ademilola twins, Cross, and Hart too. 
Whats bad in my eyes is it seemed like a bad draft. 

I think it shows how far we are from the top when 3 or 4 schools had the same or more players drafted in the first round than we had in the entire draft. 
 

We know ND lacks top talent but we’ve had what, 2 defensive first round picks in the last 12 years? Georgia had 6 this year. ND is still at least 3 solid recruiting classes away from a Georgia, Bama or OSU… and we better hope Buchner hits or we land a stud in the future. 
 

I’m glad Freeman can close the gap on that end, and I hope he learned from some of his management issues in the Fiesta Bowl. 

We’ve been doing more with less for years… we’ve been lucky where others are more talented. 
 

Facts. 

All great points, and I completely agree!

10 hours ago, jbrown_9999 said:

In his 12 season, Kelly had just two players drafted. Not a great result for a "top" HC.

Hard to compete without recruiting and developing talent. Ultimately, that is on the HC.

 

 

jbrown meant 12th guys

Alot of teams will fill their roster with players with 1 attribute, (For example, height, weight, strength speed..) and recruiting is done quick. No fighting in February. That was the Kelly Approach later on. Early he fought for Tuitt, Lynch and a few others

 

Freeman being 36 has a lot longer "fight window" He'll fight for the high 4's or 5's then still have enough energy to get a 3 or a transfer when he has too.

36 vs 60 makes a big difference. I will say Saban who is older then Kelly will still out recruit Kelly.

On 5/1/2022 at 1:13 PM, Rocketsan said:

We’ve been doing more with less for years… we’ve been lucky where others are more talented. 
 

Facts. 

That kind of implies good coaching by ND(?).

1 hour ago, AnTostal said:

That kind of implies good coaching by ND(?).

It does. Let’s negate the fact that ND’s schedule has also been so watered down. For example, one season had ND’s best opponent as Temple-Temple…

Lets be real here, ND still has loads more talent than 90 percent of teams out there. And with the schedule being the way it is. ND winning under Kelly isn’t that miraculous. Kelly was just afforded more time to stock the shelves. If Weis was given that much time and a continuous weakened schedule I’m sure he would of had the all-time wins too. 

My days defending BK are over, but didn't 9 ND players get drafted just last year? It was the most drafted since 1994. It was also the second most players drafted by any school, behind only Alabama and OSU at 10 each.

This was just an off year for ND (which, admittedly, doesn't happen at Alabama, Georgia, LSU, OSU, etc.), but ND has been putting a lot of guys in the NFL over BK's tenure. Also, wouldn't the fact that only 2 players got drafted speak volumes about BK's coaching ability - to go 11-1 last year...?

1 hour ago, tneun89 said:

My days defending BK are over, but didn't 9 ND players get drafted just last year? It was the most drafted since 1994. It was also the second most players drafted by any school, behind only Alabama and OSU at 10 each.

This was just an off year for ND (which, admittedly, doesn't happen at Alabama, Georgia, LSU, OSU, etc.), but ND has been putting a lot of guys in the NFL over BK's tenure. Also, wouldn't the fact that only 2 players got drafted speak volumes about BK's coaching ability - to go 11-1 last year...?

I believed that BK played fewer ranked teams as a percent of total games than any other ND HC. While other HCs made the adjustment to a modern passing based offense (including Saban almost 10 years ago), BK's offense seems lacking in big games. Lack of offensive skilled positions being drafted during his 12 years (compared to other CFP level teams) is a good indication of that. In two years 2021 and 2022, BK only had a single grad transfer WR get drafted in the 7th round last year and none this year while other CFP teams had multiple WRs drafted in the first round of the same draft. He also left the WR cupboard bare for Freeman.  Great coaching job by BK indeed...

Edited May 3, 20222 yr by jbrown_9999

I’m happy that Freeman seems to be doing so many things so well, particularly recruiting. 
He gets more-or-less a free pass by recruits this cycle. No head-coaching results for recruits to go by. They are wowed by his personality and the campus. Beginning with the Ohio State game, though, the on-field results will be what drives the next, and all other, recruiting cycles. 
Bringing in former players seems like a great move and you have to wonder why Kelly didn’t emphasize that more. 
I’m not unhappy that Kelly is gone. I’m excited about what I’ve seen from Freeman so far. But what really matters begins in Columbus in September. 

4 hours ago, coltssb said:

It does. Let’s negate the fact that ND’s schedule has also been so watered down. For example, one season had ND’s best opponent as Temple-Temple…

Lets be real here, ND still has loads more talent than 90 percent of teams out there. And with the schedule being the way it is. ND winning under Kelly isn’t that miraculous. Kelly was just afforded more time to stock the shelves. If Weis was given that much time and a continuous weakened schedule I’m sure he would of had the all-time wins too. 

While true. It is also scheduled so far out that it is hard to account for the downswing many of the programs on that schedule were in. 

14 minutes ago, Synoptico said:

While true. It is also scheduled so far out that it is hard to account for the downswing many of the programs on that schedule were in. 

A school such as Southern Cal being down is one thing but Swarbrick scheduling MAC teams and even a FCS team is something different. Even the ACC agreement has not resulted in many games versus ranked teams (not that Kelly can beat a healthy Top 10 team)

There has been a deliberate effort to dumb down the schedule and make it easier to win 10 games in a season. Then the definition of success for Swarbrick & Kelly was changed to merely win 10 games and "be in the conversation" instead of winning the NC.  This ignored the fact that previous coaches played less games in a season. Rockne and Leahy both had 9-0 NC seasons but that that did not stop ND from trumpeting that Kelly had more 10+ win seasons than any other ND coach.

6 hours ago, jbrown_9999 said:

I believed that BK played fewer ranked teams as a percent of total games than any other ND HC. While other HCs made the adjustment to a modern passing based offense (including Saban almost 10 years ago), BK's offense seems lacking in big games. Lack of offensive skilled positions being drafted during his 12 years (compared to other CFP level teams) is a good indication of that. In two years 2021 and 2022, BK only had a single grad transfer WR get drafted in the 7th round last year and none this year while other CFP teams had multiple WRs drafted in the first round of the same draft. He also left the WR cupboard bare for Freeman.  Great coaching job by BK indeed...

Not sure why you are ignoring the overall number of draft picks - which is a good indicator - and just focusing on WR draft picks. I also like how you conveniently started counting in 2021, a year after Claypool got drafted in the second round and two years after Boykin got drafted in the third round. Yes, Alabama, OSU, and Georgia have had more WR talent than ND over the past decade. But ND has had more OL and TE talent get drafted than anyone, so what's the difference? Focusing on one position group means nothing in the grand scheme of NFL development.

I get it. BK is a bad coach because two guys got drafted this year. Nine guys last draft means nothing. Five 10-win seasons in a row (first time in school history) means nothing. 54-9 (86%) over the last 5 years means nothing. Yes, ND plays a weaker schedule than they did in the 90s, and they also play more games per season. I get it. But winning 86% of your games is really, really good. Ask USC, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Nebraska, Miami, Michigan, etc. Every national CFB writer has BK as a Top 5 coach. I hate how he left ND and think he is a scumbag. But it's ok to admit that he is a great football coach, and ND is in a much, much better place than when he got here. Freeman is already benefitting because of it, and I think he is the right coach - not BK - to take ND to the next level because he is extremely focused on recruiting.