We’re going to break up this mailbag into a few different sections as well. With a lot of changes swirling through Brian Kelly’s football program, there’s plenty to cover on a usually slow February weekend.
(Pro Tip: If you haven’t gotten anything done for Valentine’s Day yet, use your lunch break... not your drive home.)
Thanks everybody for the questions. Keep an eye out for more of these later today or over the weekend.
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nateprez4irish: Assuming Kelly’s “ultimatum” to have his coaches competitively paid and money is not a factor, what do you make of the recent carousel? A show of weakness in the ND program for reaching the playoffs, strength of other team’s programs, attrition (although ill timed for so many to leave at once) and move up in opportunity, or a combination of all?
First off, money is always a factor. It is for you, it is for me, it is for a coach making $500,000 or $5 million. So in your first sentence alone, I think you’re throwing two things at me that I don’t necessarily agree with.
Kelly’s ultimatum is a fictional edict likely concocted on message boards and in chat rooms or comments sections. Every coach wants to have their assistants paid competitively. And maybe Kelly’s dalliance with the Eagles helped make that happen, but it was already in progress.
Notre Dame pays competitively. They didn’t used to, but they’re just fine in the general scope of assistant pay -- while not getting into the bidding war on million dollar coordinators.
(Of course the beauty of it is that we’ll never truly know for sure what these guys are getting paid because the school doesn’t need to release the information.)
If we’re looking at the three departures, I think different factors were at play for all three.
With LaFleur, he prefers the NFL game. He is not the recruiting type, and that part of the game didn’t seem to be where his heart and energy was. Add that to the fact that he had a chance to reunite with Kyle Shanahan, and go coach with his brother in Atlanta, all while probably get a significant pay upgrade to move back to the NFL, and there you have it.
Kerry Cooks was passed over for the defensive coordinator job. After being a co-coordinator he was essentially demoted to running the secondary. Cooks came to Notre Dame looking for a fresh start after spending significant time at Wisconsin. He’s likely looking at Oklahoma as a similar opportunity to build his resume and earn his way to a coordinator job.
It also sounds like he got a nice little raise. Add that to the fact that he and his wife are both from Texas, and there’s no trumping geography.
Alford’s move is connected to him wanting to be a head coach. And he thinks working under Urban Meyer will help with that. And I agree with him. But I’m more than a little skeptical about his “assistant head coach” title, Larry Johnson (defensive line coach) has the same title for defense. Add in Ed Warinner as offensive coordinator and another co-offensive coordinator and there are too many cooks in that kitchen.
But Alford and Meyer have known each other for a long, long time. And I’m sure there was no easy time to leave for Alford, but after losing out on the Colorado State job (his dream job, I’m told), he’s doing everything he can to be ready for the next time they hire a head coach.
(That got long.)
tburke9601: Do you think a recruit should be allowed out of his LOI if the school he signs with has a coaching change after signing day?
No. But I think it’s a really crappy thing for a staff to do--especially if your personal position coach is recruiting you and then they leave without notice.
Here’s the thing. Nobody has to sign on Signing Day. Nobody even needs to send in a Letter of Intent. But there’s no question this year has sparked a massive change in their calendars, and it seems like just about every big staff is making significant changes after the faxes come in, and that’s a little grotesque.
I’m not sure how many times others have said it, but it’s worth repeating (again and again): Don’t pick your school because of the coaches. They will inevitably come and go.
djduvall84:Is there any chance ND could steal a PROVEN elite recruiter and get a position of need filled in the same person? I’ve heard multiple reports of different people but none are proven elite recruiters. Shouldn’t that be a top priority?
That’s a good question. And I do think BK needs to find someone who has some connections in the state of Texas, otherwise that’s going to be an uphill battle moving forward.
All that being said, I’m not sure anybody called Tony Alford a proven recruiter before he came to Notre Dame. And if we are to assume Todd Lyght and Mike Sanford are both coming on staff, I really like these facts:
a) Lyght was a two-time All-American at ND. He was a first-rounder, Pro Bowler and a Super Bowl winner, too.
b) Sanford recruited California for Stanford and Boise State and came up on the West Coast. He also served as a recruiting coordinator, too.
There are certainly guys that are considered proven elite recruiters out there. But some of those guys built that reputation the wrong way and aren’t great institutional fits at Notre Dame.
Outside of the LaFleur hiring (and I guess VanGorder still technically needs to prove it), I think Kelly has shown himself to have a great network and has done a very good job bringing in new talent. So let’s see what happens and let’s see how these new hires do before judging them.
uptheera44: Now knowing about Sanford, how do you rate his ability as an OC and as a recruiter? Is he more of the former and less of the latter as I am sensing or is he also a proven recruiter?
onward2victory: Are there any substantiated claims that Sanford is being brought in to be groomed as the next HFBC at ND??
Only knowing what I’ve read and heard, he’ll be a dynamic add to the staff. He’s a little bit like Notre Dame’s version of Lincoln Riley, who Kelly kicked the tires on last year, and who just went to Oklahoma to run Bob Stoops’ offense.
But Sanford has more of a ground game in his DNA, and from what I’ve been told he didn’t come to Notre Dame to just let Kelly call the plays and run somebody else’s system. So after watching some of Boise State’s offense and knowing he spent two seasons at Stanford, perhaps Sanford is the type of guy you want to mesh with Kelly.
As for life after BK, who knows? Bu I don’t think you’re hiring a 33-year-old offensive coordinator and then telling him you’re grooming him to be Kelly’s successor. That’s the type of thing that gets made up on the internet and used as rationale by fans of Ohio State (where Sanford didn’t want to go) or Vandy (turned them down, too) as excuses for Sanford not picking their program.
Jack Swarbrick has built a reputation on making sound, solid decisions. Promising the job to someone in their early 30s wouldn’t be one of them.
