BK's 1st year at LSU was the same old BK
Game 1 Criminal special teams cost LSU a game FSU tried to gifted.
BK gets on a roll
Then LSU faces its biggest game & test of the season vs undefeated Tenn in Death Valley. What does the BK LSU team do? Pulls a complete no show & the game was over in the 1st half.
Lsu goes on its 2nd roll & wins the biggest game of the season & BK's career vs Bama.
With LSU back in the playoff hunt & all the momentum in the world what does the BK led Bayou Tigers do sh!ts the bed vs a sub .500 A&M team that struggled to score all year. Lsu then follows that up with a blowout loss in the SEC champ vs Georgia.
Now if history is any guide QB's under BK peak in their 1st year & regress in their 2nd & 3rd years. We shall see...but nothing about BK's 1st year at LSU didnt tell us anything we didnt already know about him as a coach.
None of that isn’t true, but then it’s ALSO a cherry-picked, one-sided perspective. The whole story looks different and, BY FAR, nets out in Kelly’s favor.
At ND:
- 7 double-digit win seasons
- 2 undefeated regular seasons
- 1 BCS appearance
- 2 CFB Playoff appearances
- All-time winningest coach by total
- 7-3 record against major rival, USC
- 9 various coach of the year awards
- 9 consensus All-Americans
- 73.9% winning percentage
- 8 top 20 finishes
- 4 top 10 finishes
- 3 top 5 finishes
And if you add the 118 games he won at GVSU to the 176 he’s won in Division I, he’s easily on track to surpass Bear Bryant’s’ and perhaps Bobby Bowden’s totals, leaving only Joe Paterno and Eddie Robinson ahead of him.
Yes, Kelly went 4-11 against ranked teams at ND, and that isn’t good, but in only 3 of those games was ND the higher-ranked team,
with two of the losses coming at the hands of superb Bama and Clemson teams in the playoffs. The one real embarrassment was the skunking by Miami in 2017 when ND was ranked 3 and Miami 7.
While Kelly lost to two more top-ten teams at LSU last year, he finished his first year there – with a team in rebuilding mode – 10-4. Freeman in comparison has gone 9-5 so far with largely the 11-1 team Kelly left him at the end of 2021, including 1-3 against top ten teams.
If some are unhappy with what Kelly accomplished, Freeman, so far, isn’t doing much differently. While it’s certainly too early to tell, why then is Freeman viewed as such a GOOD GUY and Kelly, a VILLAIN? Production-wise, there’s too little distinction between them to warrant so vehemently expressed a comparison.
What I see is an ND program that continues to struggle against top ten teams. And I don’t see that as either a Kelly OR a Freeman thing, but rather an ND THING.
Kelly is a PROVEN QUANTITY and an HOF first-rounder. Freeman is an UNPROVEN QUANTITY.
WE’LL SEE WHAT WE SEE, going forward. But make no mistake. Freeman’s at the foot of a VERY STEEP CLIMB.
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