Notre Dame Football: The Past and Future of the Brian Kelly Era

Brian Kelly is entering his tenth season as the head coach of the Notre Dame football team. He has had his fair share of ups and downs during his time in South Bend. What does the future hold for the Irish head coach?

In the history of the Notre Dame football program, there have only been four head coaches who have lasted longer than nine seasons. This fall, Brian Kelly will become the fifth.

Near the end of the 2017 season, the average tenure of a FBS head coach in was 3.8 years. At that time, only 14 of the 130 head coaches in FBS had held their position for longer than nine years.

With three years remaining on his current contract, Brian Kelly is poised to more than triple the national average for coaching tenure in the FBS.

How did he arrive here?

When Kelly was hired in 2010, the Notre Dame football program was desperate for a coach to bring the program back to national prominence. The three head coaches that preceded Kelly had some good seasons during their time, but each of them had a winning percentage of less than .600 at Notre Dame.

When you think of legendary Notre Dame coaches, four names come to mind: Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, and Lou Holtz (some may include Dan Devine).

Those four coaches were never separated by more than 12 years. There were also never more than two other coaches between their tenures (not including some stop-gap coaches).

I mention this because the year that Charlie Weis was fired (2009) was the 13th season after Lou Holtz had stepped down. Weis was also the third head coach at Notre Dame following Holtz.

When it came to great head coaches, the Notre Dame football team was experiencing a bit of a drought. The coach that replaced Weis needed to steer the program in the right direction.

Enter Brian Kelly.

In his third season in South Bend, Kelly gave Irish fans a reason to believe that he was the next great coach they were waiting for. That year (2012) he lead his team to an undefeated regular season and a berth in the BCS National Championship Game.

Despite the result of that game (a 28-point loss to Alabama), the accomplishment of completing an undefeated regular season and appearing in the national championship game significantly boosted the fanbase’s opinion of Brian Kelly. It undoubtedly boosted athletic director Jack Swarbrick’s opinion of Kelly as well.

The success of the 2012 season buoyed Kelly through 2013 and 2014. Over those two seasons, the Irish went 15-9 in the regular season and had a pair of wins in mid-tier bowl games.

After the 2014 season, doubts about Kelly”s future at Notre Dame begin to arise. Fans were wondering if 2012 was just an outlier.

If Brian Kelly was going to have a long-term future as the head coach at Notre Dame, he needed to prove that the football program under his leadership was moving in the right direction. He did just that in 2015.

The Irish went 10-2 in 2015 and were two points away from a berth in the College Football Playoff. Their two losses that year were both on the road against opponents ranked in the top 15. The latter was the season finale at Stanford, where the Irish lost on a field goal as time expired.

The season would have helped Kelly’s image much more had his team performed better in their bowl game. The Irish lost to Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl by a final score of 44-28.

Overall, the 2015 season was a net positive for Kelly. However, the three losses to highly-ranked teams perpetuated the narrative that he cannot win the big game.

We all remember what came next.

Many Notre Dame fans have mentally blocked the 2016 season from their memory. However, I believe that season is the reason why Brian Kelly will end up as one of the most tenured and winningest coaches in Notre Dame football history.

The Irish finished 4-8 that year. While everyone was extremely disappointed, most fans felt that Kelly had accomplished enough at Notre Dame to survive one awful season. Jack Swarbrick concurred.

The actions that were taken in response to that season have propelled Kelly to where he is today. He withstood the adversity of a losing season and came out on the other side looking like a new coach.

During the season, Kelly fired defensive coordinator Brian Van Gorder. After the season concluded, Kelly made the decision to part ways with strength and conditioning coach Paul Longo and special teams coordinator Scott Booker.

Kelly also held exit interviews with players and staff to figure out what he could do to become a better coach. It was not just for show, either. He listened to all of their feedback and made adjustments to his schedule and coaching style.

Kelly was forced to evolve as a coach. He was also given an opportunity to hire three talented coordinators and one of the best strength coaches in the country.

Following the 2016 season, fans were not sure what to expect from the football team. Like Harvey Dent said, “The night is always darkest before the dawn.”

In the two subsequent seasons, the Irish went 22-4 overall — including an undefeated regular season and berth in the College Football Playoff in 2018.

It felt like a new era of Brian Kelly had begun.

There were still some losses in big games in 2017 and 2018. Maybe that will eventually be Kelly’s downfall, but it was a complete 180 from the debacle of 2016.

That brings us to today. Kelly has three seasons remaining on his current contract. If he coaches the next three seasons, he will have the second-longest tenure of any Notre Dame football coach — longer than Leahy, Parseghian, and Holtz.

In a recent interview with Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports, Kelly said, “I may look to see if we can add two more years.”

Adding two years to the end of his current contract would give Kelly the opportunity to become the longest-tenured coach in the storied history of Notre Dame football, surpassing the legendary Knute Rockne.

There were multiple times during Kelly’s tenure when the thought of him coaching until 2023 would have sounded ludicrous. Today, it seems possible. That shift in mindset would not have taken place without the transformation that followed the 2016 season.

Kelly is also close to becoming the winningest football coach in Notre Dame history. He currently has 81 wins (considering the wins vacated by the NCAA) and is just 24 wins behind Knute Rockne in the record books.

It is very possible that Kelly could pass Rockne in total wins at some point during the 2021 football season. Besides winning a national championship, could you think of a better note to retire on?

“Hey, Jack. What about another 37-0 win over Michigan?”

Yeah, I take my first statement back. THAT would be the best note to retire on.