re: Brian Polian by the Numbers

quote:

---

Kelly hired someone he had previously worked with to run his recruiting operations, which admittedly seems to be going well

---

He's good enough to keep on staff somewhere.

quote:

---

we must recognize that not once in 5 years on Kelly's staff at Notre Dame did Polian's Special Teams rank in the Top 25 according to Football Outsiders.

---

If Polian’s only responsibility were ST, that might be a reasonable standard. He is on staff to be the recruiting coordinator. That’s how he primarily should be judged. If ST are just somewhere around average and not costing the team games, that’s good enough. They don’t have to be Top 25. I agree that’s not where they are this season and ST did cost the FSU game, but his track record at ND was more middling. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t outside the Top 100 either.

quote:

---

The only thing to do mid-season is bring on special teams consultant to maybe provide an extra set of eyes or strategic direction. I am not advocating Polian goes altogether. Someone correctly pointed out that he is our recruiting coordinator, and we cannot afford to lose that.

He is still underperforming as a Special Teams coach, and one game without a huge mistake does not change that.

---

yep- on all counts.

We can afford a, or several, top notch consultants.

The numbers OP posted equal one thing- Polian's feeling deserve to be hurt.

quote:

---

ST didn’t bury us during the Ole Miss game. Lets just hope the unit continues to get better.

---

This. I didn’t believe Denbrock would shift the offense very much to help Daniels. He has.

I didn’t think Daniels would suddenly loosen up and start throwing the ball downfield. He has.

I didn’t think the O Line could be any better than average this season. They are pretty close to accomplishing that.

ST has been bad, but I’m done with saying things can’t improve with this team because I’m tired of being wrong. They just had a better game. Let’s see what things look like after the bye week.

quote:

---

penalty on the opening kickoff and a missed field goal.

---

god damn polian missed a field goal

At this point let's just hope Polian gets the recruiting class in nicely and manages to poach a few for next year's roster. Only way his salary could be justified for this year.

quote:

---

Do you and the others in this thread making these comments know who all the analysts are on staff, what their backgrounds are, and what assignments they have? I’m not saying you are wrong, only questioning whether you can be so sure Kelly hasn’t already done this.

---

I know of several, but not ST's. My point would be that whomever they are, and yes there are very likely several on staff, they are not effective.

What I'm suggesting is a ST coach who is not a coach in name. Polian can be the ST Coach "in name only". It does pose an issue at practices (and of course games) but there are some loopholes that can be exploited.

quote:

---

Football Outsiders Special Teams Rankings for ND under Polian:

2021- #41
2020- #28
2019- #28
2018- #61
2017- #93 (#87 in 2016)

He inherited a bad special teams unit and improved them after the first season. It looks like your Top 25 cutoff was particularly arbitrary given the two seasons at #28. ND was actually pretty good on ST the last 3 seasons.

---

It's admittedly a little arbitrary, but I don't think Top-25 is much to ask for. With that being said, most of his two best years still had some outlying poor units. Kick and punt return were ranked 119 and 86 respectively in 2019, and he was helped by switching kickoff specialists and increasing touchback rate by more than 50%. It's hard for me to credit that to coaching. A new kicker came in and kicked the ball farther, not that much different than what we saw against Ole Miss

quote:

---

It's admittedly a little arbitrary, but I don't think Top-25 is much to ask for. With that being said, most of his two best years still had some outlying poor units. Kick and punt return were ranked 119 and 86 respectively in 2019, and he was helped by switching kickoff specialists and increasing touchback rate by more than 50%. It's hard for me to credit that to coaching. A new kicker came in and kicked the ball farther, not that much different than what we saw against Ole Miss

---

It just seems like you’re trying really hard to paint Polian in a bad light. You only want to accept the data points if they support your position. You can pick apart any statistic and explain it away if you try hard enough. The question is whether you’ve applied that same level of scrutiny to any other ST coaches. Who would live up to the standard you are setting?

It’s entirely inconsistent to hold poor performance for players against the coach, but discount good performance as having nothing to do with the coach. You can’t have it both ways. Also the low rankings in kick and punt returns were due to coaching philosophy on Kelly’s part. He took a conservative approach to avoid mistakes. They would have been better served to do the same this year.

Recruiting >>> Special Teams

Bad coaching is not why players drop punts