Dear Notre Dame football fans: Stop complaining about the Rees hire!

There is a large chunk of the Notre Dame football fan base that is growing more insuffereable by the minute in regard to the Tommy Rees OC hire.

Tommy Rees is the offensive coordinator for the Notre Dame football program. It’s heartbreaking. The Irish offense will be led by a young, energetic, well-regarded, up and coming coach. It’s horrible.

Rees isn’t who Notre Dame fans wanted. He wasn’t who they wanted when he was the Notre Dame quarterback, and he isn’t who they wanted now. So, fans have decided to bravely sit behind their keyboards and bash the hire.

There are fair critiques to make about the promotion of Rees to offensive coordinator. He does have limited experience, especially as a play caller. That said, he did well in his first go-round at the Camping World Bowl.

Other people claim that the offense won’t be any different under Rees. It will be the same old Brian Kelly offense that fans are sick of watching.

This is just patently false.

For the past three seasons, Chip Long has been running his own offense, not Brian Kelly’s, with Notre Dame. Rees will run his own offense, schemes, gameplans, and call his own plays. His personality and preparation will be unique to him. He will have been influenced by minds like Ken Whisenhunt. Rees was quarterbacking Notre Dame when Chuck Martin was the offensive coordinator. Do you believe his offensive philosophies have no influence on Rees today?

Rees’ offense will be unique. Claiming it won’t be is an ignorant assumption. Claiming this hire was lazy is also ignorant.

The shame is that Notre Dame fans are typically smart fans. They’re normally not ignorant. They’re just upset, and in the mood to complain, because they wanted Joe Moorhead — or even a splashier hire — to take over the offense. Rumors swirled of mutual interest, and fans got excited.

Then it didn’t happen. Now fans are taking out their disappointment on Rees.

Here’s the thing, Joe Moorhead wouldn’t have been a home run hire. He was a disaster as Mississippi State’s head coach. This past season, Mississippi State was ranked 70th in the country in total offense. In the season prior, he had a senior quarterback in Nick Fitzgerald, and completely misused him. Fitzgerald was a running quarterback who Moorhead didn’t like to run.

He went into a new situation and mis-evaluated his personnel. This caused him to misuse his personnel. Is that really who you want at offensive coordinator?

Of course, Moorhead was at Penn State before Mississippi State. He had talent like Saquon Barkley at his disposal. So what were Trace McSorely’s numbers at quarterback? 3,570 yards passing and a 66 percent completion percentage to go with 28 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. 

That’s fine, but Ian Book has been better.

So, are you really upset that Notre Dame didn’t hire Joe Moorhead as the offensive coordinator? Is it more likely that you just got the idea of hiring an RPO guy (like Long) in your collective heads and can’t handle that it didn’t happen?

Maybe you have legitimate concerns about Rees. Maybe you felt a better option was out there. However, shouting about how Brian Kelly puts no effort forth and Rees will be an awful hire is ridiculous.

Stop complaining and give Tommy Rees the chance at offensive coordinator that he was never given as quarterback.