Notre Dame football: 3 key advantages against Florida State

Notre Dame football: 3 key advantages against Florida State

Notre Dame Has a Distinct Coaching Advantage

A lot of Notre Dame fans like to complain about Brian Kelly. It’s easy to do. Kelly hasn’t won a major bowl game yet. He has struggled against the elite teams in the game, and he doesn’t dominate lesser opponents to the same extent that the thin layer of truly elite coaches does.

That, of course, is completely unfair to Brian Kelly. Kelly had a Notre Dame team reeling from the Charlie Weis era, and he took them to a BCS National Championship game in year three. He has made Notre Dame a consistent top-10 team and has gone to two of the last three College Football Playoffs.

This season, he will pass Knute Rockne on the all-time wins list for a Notre Dame head coach.

Brian Kelly himself, as well as the staff that he has built at Notre Dame, are significantly better than the staff at Florida State.

Mike Norvell has, historically, has the same trouble against teams who are better than his team that Brian Kelly does. He never could beat UCF when he was at Memphis, for instance, and he even blew multi-score leads regularly. Norvell also inherited a strong program at Memphis from current Virginia Tech head coach Justin Fuente. He hasn’t proven to be as capable of a coach as Kelly.

That’s before you consider just how good of a group of assistant coaches that Notre Dame has from top to bottom. It means the Irish are developing talent better, recruiting better, and they’ll be better prepared to play in Tallahassee.