Jack Swarbrick threw around the word “Reboot” liberally this off-season which many jokingly (and to some extent justifiably) compared to what college students engage in the day after a binge weekend… just the college football coaching version.  What’s clear now is that the reboot has had a marked impact that has lifted the team from last year’s inexcusable disaster. Whether it’s going to be enough to return ND to glory remains an open question.  As good as this run looks, it’s worth remembering that it’s the fourth time in six years ND has entered the final stretch in the top ten, only once did it stay there. This time feels different than the last two, Notre Dame is the top 11/10 in both offense and defense, top 5 in rushing and has been crushing the spirits of opponents one-by-one, so it’s worth a look underneath the hood.

The reboot is extensive and seems to cover eight broad areas:

1. Strength and Conditioning and Nutrition
2. Defensive Coaching
3. Offensive Coaching
4. Special Teams
5. Recruiting
6. Scouting
7. Leadership and Mental Preparation
8. Brian Kelly

Reboot 1: Strength and Conditioning and Nutrition

Click Here For Player quotes on S&C

Why is S&C so important in college football?  The S&C coach spends more time with the players than the other coaches which are limited by time constraints.  In many ways,  S&C sets the “culture”… as what you do on a daily basis IS the culture of any team and that shows up on gameday.

“It’s the intangibles: effort, mental toughness, being responsible for doing what you need to do,” Saban says. “It does require a tremendous amount of physical conditioning to sustain those things. People loaf when they’re tired. Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”

Last year’s exit interviews confirmed that the problem wasn’t with the players, the problem was with leadership and process. Players were allowed to make “fungible” workout schedules, there was little oversight or accountability and players became noticeably weaker as the season progressed.   There were four staff members “kind of” driving accountability across the team and a head of S&C who was dealing with health issues.

In addition, Notre Dame had lost it top nutritionists.   From a major college standpoint, it was a mess.  Chase Hounshell, who went from ND to Ohio State described OSU’s philosophy this way: “There was always a competition going on and eyes watching you. You’re always just in competition. There is always a winner and always a loser at Ohio State…. At Notre Dame, we didn’t have any competition going one-on-one with someone”.  It was so bad that kids were going to side workouts to get in shape.  Injuries, lack of power, lack of stamina, lack of commitment were all cited as issues.

As Mike Frank has noted many times before, it’s fairly easy for players to get complacent at Notre Dame as there are so many distractions and football is not the only possibility for student athletes. At other schools, football is looked at as the only route to success.  At Notre Dame, players become investment bankers.   In other words, it’s harder to get their attention and commitment.

Notre Dame appears to have pushed all in. Notre Dame hired Matt Balis, who worked for Ohio State’s Micky Marotti and directly for Urban Meyer at Utah, who brought in team-based competition, sports science, high tech and unprecedented oversight.  The S&C staff ballooned from 4 to 9 (with interns.)  Under Balis are David Ballou who is the “velocity” and sports science expert and Jacob Flint who specializes in Olympic lifts.  Here’s a short summation of the changes:

• From four coaches overseeing 52 man workouts and giving players flexibility to nine coaches overseeing eight 13 man squads, each of which has a team leader and a strength coach.

•  From an approach that seemed a bit behind the times… to one that integrates different philosophies. “It’s all effort based,” Balis said. “It is a principle program. We are going to take from the Olympic world. We power clean, and hang clean. We are going to do velocity training with the Elite Form and move the bar fast. Dynamic effort, high intensity until failure. We balance those things”

• From very little accountability to constant accountability.  Teams are graded against each other, individuals on teams are ranked from highest to lowest and it’s all on a board for everyone to see. Results are posted on the boards with winners and losers, those who are “hungry” and those who, uh hum, aren’t.

• Low tech to high tech. Data from every session is analyzed. Ballou posts things like:   “Squat peak power numbers up = best game speed numbers of season”. Kelly noted: “we have numbers that speak to strength gains in the weight room. Our ability to track it now has really given us a physical edge as we go into each and every week, and it’s something that we can relate to our players weekly.”

• From in-season maintenance to in-season training. More from Ballou: “the Team has the best Monday lift of the season. Bars were moving fast in the squat rack today!” “Hard to overstate importance of speed in football. Acceleration, Deceleration, & COD show up every snap. Transfer of training so important.” Kelly also talked about in-season training, “we’ve made incredible strides during the season. We’re a stronger football team today than we were in August… we’re taking the weight times the speed to get the wattage, and that’s giving us the neuromuscular firing that’s giving us those numbers that we can track our players. That is applicable to the force against the ground, and we’re seeing some great moves for us.”  

• From injury prevention to dysfunction diagnosis and corrective action. Notre Dame uses a Dari motion capture tool to analyze player dysfunctions, for instance, Jay Hayes had a problem that was fixed with orthotics.  Every day players report in on soreness and tiredness and coaches monitor their status on an electronic board. As Eric Hansen noted,  “High on the wall is a video screen with every Notre Dame football player’s picture contained within a small box and a series a numbers listed under each photo.” Kelly said that pro-active approach extends to pregame preparation, “Dale Jones has done an incredible job with our correctives. He should get a lot of the credit. On game day he probably gets his hands on 30 to 40 guys, so he’s done a really good job in that respect.”

• Rebuilding the nutrition program which had atrophied after the program lost several nutritionists. ND will be getting its own football dining hall when the revamp of the GUG is complete.

Reboot 2: Defensive staff and philosophy

Brian Van Gorder took a posture of “if you don’t know it… it’s on you”.  New defensive coordinator Mike Elko believes that if players aren’t getting it, he wants to know why and will simplify if necessary, “If they can’t learn concepts, they’re constantly going to be seeing things that they don’t understand. You’re asking them to do things that make sense to them. You’re explaining why.”  Elko also believes in dictating the direction of the game.  He wants to make negative plays that stall offenses and cause turnovers.  To that end he brings pressure from everywhere, but in a very sound and simple way so that players trust in themselves and play faster. Perhaps most heartening is his focus on fundamentals and drills to create turnovers, practices are very intentional.  Elko, to this point, has proven to be very good at in game adjustments.

Reboot 3: Offensive staff and philosophy

New Offensive coordinator Chip Long says he’s looking to be a physical football team and believes in a play-action based game predicated off a strong running game.  “At the end of the day, we’re gonna be able to run the ball and run the ball to win,” Long said. “And then be able to take shots when we want to. We’re going to be a physical football team.” I have to admit, I was very suspect about his commitment to the run, but he has proven me wrong.  Every week, Long distributes videos of players knocking their opponents backward.  Perhaps the best sign of the impact this philosophy is  Chase Claypool who is crushing defensive backs and Durham Smythe who’s become an effective sixth lineman.   Long runs plays out of multiple formations, which means we don’t need constant personnel shifts that give the play away.  Are we really seeing effective use of misdirection?  Who’d a thunk it?   Long runs a lot of two tight end sets, which means we can show power and then split a tight end out. He also uses the HBack (think fullback) to overload on power. Last week he ran a four tight end set.  That makes a lot of sense with the depth we have at the position.  He also likes to roll out his QBs, which I’ve been screaming about for years.

Reboot 4: Special Teams

Not seeing it.  Polian has to be feeling some heat as the weakest link on the team.  Next.

Reboot 5: Recruiting

Taking a page from Ohio State and harkening back to the day of Vinnie Cerrato, Notre Dame is looking to build out its recruiting ability.    For reference, Cleveland.com published a deep dive into Ohio State’s recruiting operation that detailed the Buckeyes’ 10-person recruiting department and how Ohio State identifies talent and how it recruits it, from film evaluations to on-campus visits to social media engagement.  Notre Dame is changing its philosophy, rather than go for the best players out there, they’re looking for the best players who they believe will thrive at Notre Dame.  To do that, Notre Dame believes it needs to recruit for the skill and not depend upon coaches: “Our resource focus is on fit evaluation more than talent evaluation,” Swarbrick told Irish Illustrated. “I very much think we have to give our coaches additional resources to evaluate fit. That’s by far our biggest challenge.”  Notre Dame now has a head of scouting.  Bill Rees, father of Tommy, is looking for clues into what creates a successful Notre Dame recruit. It has been heartening to see the words “Catholic” and “cathedral” used so often in recruiting. Perhaps the staff is focusing on feeder schools where it already has a built in advantage?

Reboot 6: Scouting

Rees was hired as director of scouting, but he also scouts opposing team’s talent for weaknesses.  Additionally, Kelly said he’s now self-scouting weekly which he admitted he hadn’t done before.  We’ll just let you think on that one.

Reboot 7: Leadership and Mental Preparation

Leadership is much more intentional. Notre Dame named 7 captains, gave them responsibility and monitors their collective success and failure.  Workout groups and locker groups are changed to make sure cliques don’t develop and to create a climate where the team supports one another.  Mental Performance consultant Amber Selking has been working with the team on adopting the right mental approach. Says Kelly, “She gives us a language we can all speak and understand when it comes to building mental toughness.” Kelly continues, “This all feeds into how we played in the fourth quarter last year and how we correct that. We’ve worked collaboratively in putting together the mental performance pieces for our football team since January. She’s worked in physician groups, she’s worked individually, she’s worked with the units, offense, defense and special teams, and then she’s worked one-on-one with me, so we could have this collaborative approach to mental performance.” As Holtz used to do, Selking uses techniques to help the team mentally rehearse for performance.

Reboot 8: Brian Kelly

Brian Kelly has, to this point, elevated himself from offensive tinkerer to head coach.  You can hear it in his press conferences, you can see it in the on the field performance.   As many have noticed, Kelly doesn’t have a playsheet (his woobie) in his hands during games, a clear signal that he’s actually turned play calling over to Chip Long.   That’s important because Kelly would get so caught up in the minutiae of the offense, he let the rest of the team fall to shit.  Literally, the entire team suffered from some malady last year.  Now he’s actively involved on a daily basis following up with players and actually seems committed this year to developing the team.  He’s involved with players, toned down his criticism and seems to view his role differently.  Of course, one bad loss and who knows what will happen.   For now, I’m buying the ‘boot.