Maybe it’s the dearth of college football news after a roller coaster Signing Day, but Stewart Mandel over at SI.com had an incredibly complimentary column about Brian Kelly’s recruiting class and how it could produce a “return to prominence.”
(Apparently, SI is gun shy of using the ol’ “Return to Glory” slogan, too. Can’t say I blame them.)
Mandel, who was burned when he hopped on the Irish bandwagon back in 2006, seemingly had it with picking the Irish to succeed, even supporting a Pat Fitzgerald quote and calling the Northwestern football program on par with the Irish at the tail end of the 2009 season.
The quote of record from Mandel’s piece back then:
(Major aside: I’ll be the first to chuckle at Fitzgerald’s comments, and I already addressed them head-on back in November ’09. What Northwestern is doing is admirable, but it’s far from a top-flight football program, winning only nine games once since the turn of the century and scheduling absolute patsies in the non-conference portion of their schedule.)
Oh what a difference a coaching change and a recruiting class filled with elite defensive players makes... Almost begrudgingly, Mandel himself turns a blind eye on past recruiting classes filled with offensive blue-chippers and instead looked at the trio of Aaron Lynch, Stephon Tuitt, and Ishaq Williams as proof that Brian Kelly and his coaching staff have put together the pieces needed to bring the Irish football program back into relevance.Non-Notre Dame fans have every reason to be skeptical of yet another celebrated recruiting class. Several of Weis’ most highly rated signees never came close to meeting the hype, fueling the theory that perhaps Notre Dame five-star recruits are like Duke McDonald’s All-Americans: their status comes with the school.
But there’s reason to believe this class will turn out differently than those before it.
“I think Brian Kelly will coach some of these guys better than Charlie Weis did,” said Scout.com’s Wallace. “He knows how to teach a college player better. He knows how to develop personnel at this level. He turned that team around [last year] and they’re riding momentum.”
Coming off their first eight-win season in four years, it’s not unreasonable to think the Irish could earn a BCS bowl berth in Kelly’s second season. They’ve earned three over the past 13 seasons. Much will depend on the development of whomever wins the quarterback derby, but Notre Dame will surround that player with as many as 18 guys with starting experience, including star receiver Floyd, All-America caliber linebacker Mant’i Teo and fourth-year starting safety Smith.
The difference between the Champs Sports Bowl and the Orange Bowl could come down to whether incoming freshmen like Lynch, Tuitt and Williams (who could become a hybrid linebacker in Diaco’s 3-4 defense) can provide an immediate impact.
“If I didn’t come here knowing I have the chance to start as a freshman, maybe I wouldn’t be [working] as crazy as I am in the weight room,” said early enrollee Lynch. “I’m going crazy because I want to play this year coming up.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find a Notre Dame fan that wasn’t jumping for joy when Charlie Weis inked the mega-recruiting classes of 2006 and 2007, and while there may not be a archive to prove it, I too was too star-crazed to realize the strategic imbalances that plagued those two classes.
That said, while Mandel is pointing to this season’s recruiting successes as a reason why the Irish have a shot to make it to the BCS in Brian Kelly’s second season, he should be pointing to Charlie Weis’ success inking the 2008 recruiting class, which provided starters like Robert Blanton, Braxston Cave, Dayne Crist, Sean Cwynar, Darius Fleming, Michael Floyd, Ethan Johnson, Kapron Lewis-Moore, Trevor Robinson and Jamoris Slaughter to the roster, with intriguing wildcards like Steve Filer and Jonas Gray potentially becoming the difference makers many expected them to be.
Still, with 8 months to go until the Irish actually take the field again, it’s good to see that it isn’t just Irish fans feeling optimistic about the direction of the Irish football program.