Brian Kelly has received quite a bit of criticism on the heels of Notre Dame's disastrous 2016 campaign. It is, quite obviously, never acceptable for a program like Notre Dame to finish 4-8 in a season and earlier this week, Kelly admitted that he "f***ed up last year's team" in an interview with Bleacher Report.
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Beyond that, Kelly went on to detail his errors:
"I was the absent professor. I wasn't paying attention to the details that we needed. There were internal issues that — if a guy is on it, and he's doing his job as the head coach, he would've seen those things early. My flawed philosophy was, 'We're going to score points early while we're figuring it out on the other side with a young defense.' Well, that didn't happen. We gave up way too many points early, we lost three games, and now we're in trouble."
It is jarring to see a head coach essentially admit to being "absent" and missing things that he should have seen. The relationship between Kelly and the fan base has certainly been contentious given the results, but this is the kind of sentiment that can place a head coach even more firmly on the hot seat than he already was.
Another season like 2016 will almost certainly send Kelly packing in South Bend and he just placed the microscope on himself.
