Brian Kelly Isn’t Recruiting Like Charlie Weis. Isn’t That The Point?

↵Now that it’s over and done, the strangest thing about Charlie Weis’ tenure as Notre Dame’s head coach was that a career NFL assistant who made his name on Xs and Os was a demonic recruiter but inept at all the technical details that make football players not terrible. This set Weis up for epic failure, since by year four of his regime he was rolling around with epically talented teams that did things like lose to Syracuse. ↵

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↵↵Brian Kelly, on the other hand, created a BCS team out of hay and a spare mannequin arm. He’s been a college head coach going on 20 years. He could not be more different from Weis if you had constructed him entirely for that purpose ... and his recruiting is off to a somewhat rocky start. Notre Dame has lost commitments from a couple of touted recruits—Indiana DE Blake Leuders and Florida RB Giovanni Bernard—since Kelly’s hire and lost mega-DE Chris Martin to Cal when Weis got fired. ↵

↵↵Meanwhile, the guys they’ve picked up and gone after since then have not exactly been blue chips. They grabbed Austin Collinsworth—yes, Cris Collinsworth’s son—and are probably going to get a couple of anonymous quarterback recruits named Luke Massa and Derek Roback. Roback is a Toledo commit; Massa was a Cincinnati commit. These guys are not Jimmy Clausen and they’re odd additions to a class that already has two quarterbacks. ↵Though Notre Dame is still in on a few big fish, they’re probably not going to get any of them other than Ohio offensive lineman Matt James.↵

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↵↵⇥↵⇥Don’t get me wrong, I think this class, right now, is scary, especially when paired with last years. That said, if there’s one undersold market in college football it’s recruiting kids who play different positions. … ↵⇥

↵⇥↵⇥Kelly told ND he was going to do just that and it appears he’s doing it... I just hope it’s not going to be at the expense of recruiting kids who are already standouts at their positions. This is not justifying the overall class, I’m noting some areas that I think Kelly has already screwed up for a post signing day column. ↵⇥

↵⇥↵⇥Nervous in DC ↵⇥

↵↵↵The overall tenor there is one of concern and alarm. But… isn’t this what you wanted? Okay, probably not. You wanted a thunderous combination of Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, and Bob Stoops. But given what we know about Brian Kelly’s ability to find gold in scrap metal and Charlie Weis’ inability to do anything other than bloviate, maybe judgment should be reserved. Or you could give him a 10-year contract for losing to USC, I guess. ↵

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