7. Higher ceiling, lower floor than Kelly.

Clarification: When I refer to Kelly's "floor", I'm not talking about the nadir of his 4-8 2016 season, I'm talking about the ceiling and floor that we had reached by the time that Kelly departed.

While it's great that he finally got ND back to a point where being ranked and contending for playoff consideration was taken for granted, it was not so great that losing decisively to an elite program once we got to the playoffs was also taken for granted.

Freeman is super likeable and I'll be rooting for him with optimism, but I was disappointed that ND couldn't parlay its higher ceiling/floor to snag a coach who is not such a work-in-progress.