Brian Kelly did an excellent job rebuilding ND after the 2016 4-8 debacle. Lest people think I'm some sort of Kelly hater or jilted ex, I will repeat that, he did an EXCELLENT job his last 5 years at ND. He is, however, a flawed coach in many ways, and he's not anywhere close to being on the same level as Meyer or Saban.

During Kelly's 12 years at ND, the weakest facet of the team was almost always the facet Kelly was most directly involved with, QB play and the passing game. QB is also the position that is probably least affected by admissions or academics, so that excuse doesn't really carry water. Kelly cycled through, if memory serves, 6 OCs (including Denbrock for 1 mediocre year), and the results were always the same. The OL could maul most teams on the schedule, but anytime ND played defenses with equal athletes, the offense couldn't throw more than 10 yards down field. The one constant was always Kelly and his rinky dink passing scheme. That Cincinnati/Bama game looked eerily familiar yesterday.

That brings me to Kelly's self awareness. At ND, he was always pushing the administration for improvements to the football program, admissions exceptions, facilities, recruiting budget, you name it, and for the most part, he got what he asked for. The ND admin is typically slow to react, so this was a good and necessary thing by Kelly. He put every aspect of the program under the microscope, but he never seemed to appreciate that the aspect of the program that most directly had his fingerprints on it could be a weak link of the team. The hiring of Denbrock leads me to believe that he still doesn't recognize this. If he were a young coach trying to rebuild a mid-tier ACC school like Va Tech or BC, then I get why you go with a known, even if unspectacular, quantity like Denbrock. Kelly, however, is in the twilight of his career and has accomplished every thing in the sport except for a national title. In this scenario, I'm mystified why he'd go back to the well with Denbrock. The only plausible explanation is that Kelly is simply incapable of looking in the mirror and accepting that he could possibly be part of the problem.