In Weis's first year, the team was 9-3 and finished 9th in the AP poll. The next year they finished 17th. They finished unranked the next three years and then he was gone.

Then Weis went to Kansas and didn't make it through 3 years.

Charlie Weis didn't have a higher ceiling. His best year was his first, and that topped out at 9th. He was a flat out bad coach.

Brian Kelly isn't a bad coach, not in the manner of a Weis or Willingham. The problem with Brian Kelly is that he is not good enough. He may not be good enough in a number of ways. However, to me, it is simple. He is not good enough to win a National Championship. That would be my standard for keeping a coach.

There is no need to exaggerate the matter. No need to compare him to a Weisian standard. No need to suggest that there are 50, 60, 80 coaches in college football better than him. The truth is enough. Kelly is better than a lot of college coaches, but he is not good enough. He is not good enough to win a NC at Notre Dame and that's should be the job.

better? yes, I'll grant you that Kelly runs a better program than Weis. If Kelly went to Kansas, he'd also suck, it has been a shithole program for decades (I'm a Kansas alum by the way...so I've seen it all)

Kelly runs a decent program for the most part. But the gameday manager and the offensive system is way behind Weis. For example, no way Kelly plays a Carroll led SC team tough in any of the years Weis did. You'll never convince me that he would have

The thing is, Charlie Weis was pretty terrible. He came in with a lot of bluster and some ok results, but that quickly and badly faded.

"Kelly runs a decent program for the most part." That makes him a much better coach than Weis.

If Kelly were let go after this season, you would have misguided fans asking who we could get. When Weis was let go, no reason to ask the question - anybody would be fine.

My opinions are not a testament to Kelly's greatness. Not at all. Rather, as others have noted, ND had an absolutely horrific string of coaching hires.

beat a top 5 team under Weis. We can't under Kelly. With Kelly, we know we have 0.00% chance of ever winning a title or ever beating a top 5 team in a bowl game (when the top 5 is the real deal versus fake earlier in the season).

Weis could not teach new players how to play the game. That's a fatal flaw. However, if you handed him players that were taught by someone else basic fundamentals -- he could indeed do more with then offensively than most coaches.

If Weis had a 2nd in command that in effect ran practices to teach basic skills to players and had someone like Lea as his DC, he had a higher ceiling than Kelly does. Get Weis into a title game and there was greater than 0% chance he could win.

This is more a statement about how incredibly bad our state is under Kelly -- we are locked into a coach that we know can never be fired and can never win ANY game of consequence. Not only will we never win a title under Kelly -- we will never win a playoff game or a major bowl game against a top 5 team (the next team out of the playoff -- for example).

Weis didn't have a higher ceiling. His first year was his best. It included 3 losses and a 9th place ranking. It went downhill after that. He confirmed his incompetence at Kansas.

His ceiling was low, as was his floor.

I’m not making the case that it is good enough for a successful ND coach though.

Kelly is 67-17 (0.798) vs unranked teams.

Weis was 31-15 (0.674j

Willingham was 14-7 (0.667)

Davie was 29-10 (0.744)

Holtz was 67-10 (0.870)

Kelly has had more unranked dogs scheduled for him (Bowling Green, Ball State).

Kelly is better than Willingham and Weis were. But he is not a good enough coach to field great ND teams. To retain him is to say that ND accepts being no better than this.

This is why I have argued there are 10's of coaches out there with a higher ceiling than Kelly. They may also have a lower average and lower floor -- but unlike Kelly they also have greater than 0% chance of ever beating a top 5 team and a title.

Why? Because Kelly is locked into a 100% failed offensive system. Period. End of debate. Given that he will never alter the offense under any circumstances -- he can never win a title.

Other coaches have a higher ceiling if for no other reason than they will attempt to change over time. Some, if handed the miracle right fit at QB can win (see Auburn, Texas). Some if handed a prior coaches players can win (see Miami). Kelly cannot -- because his offensive system makes it impossible to win even if he has the miracle QB fall into his lap.

Even a miracle QB has at least one very bad game every season. Even the miracle QB isn't enough to overwhelm the #2-#5 teams in bowl games via exclusively passing the ball.

All the other teams win because in dark times they have a more diverse run game that can plug the gap just enough when the miracle QB isn't performing well. We don't. We never will. Thus our offense is a 20 point max against a top 5 team as demonstrated and against any top 20 team on the road is highly likely to be rattled and stopped (as 11 straight losses demonstrates).

Other coaches present the possibility of having 1 breakout year -- of stumbling by accident into a coordinator that works, because they try changing coordinators and systems.

Look at LSU. Ed O was willing to try something new. It worked. It could have failed -- but the act of being willing to try to change also created the chance it could actually work, and it has worked.

His biggest win was arguably defeating the defending CO champion Michigan team in 98. Davis also beat Tom Brady and Drew Brees in the same month. He might be the only coach to have ver done that.

He still sucked, but 1998 showed a lot of promise until the last 2 games. All of these coaches seem to have one teaser year every 4 or 5 years. Kelly did it in 2012 and last year.

We need a coach who doesn’t have teaser years. Just has years like 1998 and 2002 (the first nice games at least), 2005, 2012, 2018, and actually takes one or 2 of those years that is now a consistent theme to a championship. I’m ok having a team like those listed above consistently and actually winning the important games every once in a while (shocking I know) so that we can win a freaking championship every 4 or 5 years instead of these bullshit teaser years that just gets us excited for a few months or until a crushing embarrassing loss in a really big game.

To say merely that BK is better than the three chumps who preceded him is damning by faint praise.

I believe every coach you named was directed to make changes in assistants. Think only Ty told his boss to shove it.

but aside from that I think you're right.

The Michigan team that trounced ND last night will lose at least one more game, possibly two.

OSU will absolutely demolish UM.

The Irish? All of a sudden the remaining games look fraught with peril.

Virginia Tech is 5-2 and playing pretty well. They kept coming back against Carolina and took them into 6 OTs before beating them.

Navy will probably be a top 25 team by the time they come to ND. I can absolutely see Kelly losing to Navy for a third time.

BC and Stanford will give us fits and hell, Duke isn't terrible, either.

We could be looking at 8-4

The year before Kelly almost caused a mutiny after the SC game so I find it hard to give Kelly too much credit for '12. It was an excellent team because the schedule was down and the leadership was outstanding, the talent very good, and the coaching stayed out of the way. This was all exposed in early '13 by Alabama who controlled every aspect of that game. Because of Kelly's weak coaching Alabama's coaching/talent advantage, ND had no chance.

care less to make a change.

Everything looks just fine thru his green colored lady glasses.

...then all of the Three Stooges also met it.

The fact that any of us is still pointing at that moment seven seasons ago is evidence in itself that BK is a failure.