Misery Index Week 4: Sinking in South Bend
Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly spoke for more than eight minutes following his team’s shocking 38-35 loss to Duke on Saturday. It was a speech filled with platitudes and talk about the intangibles his team doesn’t have like “grit” and “passion.” He mentioned poor execution by his players and threatened personnel change for practically every position.
What he didn’t say, however, spoke volumes and reinforced the worst perceptions of him that the Notre Dame fan base has built up over seven years.
Kelly’s problem is that he too often comes off like a guy who has all the answers, or when he doesn’t, will just change the question. It’s not an endearing quality for a multimillion-dollar head coach to publicly blame the players while shirking responsibility for himself, but it’s the kind of thing Kelly edges toward too often in his frustration following bad performances.
When he praises the coaching but blasts the execution, as he did Saturday, it comes off as incredibly tone deaf and only inflames the most passionate corners of the fan base.
College football's Week 4 winners and losers
Obviously, things are dire at Notre Dame right now, and Kelly sent a loud message Sunday when he fired defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder in the wake of a 1-3 start. It was a necessary move, given how bad Notre Dame’s defense has played this season. As noted by Pete Sampson of Irish Illustrated, Notre Dame had allowed a nation-worst five plays of 60 yards or more this season. By comparison, predecessor Bob Diaco (now UConn’s head coach) coached a defense that gave up that many over the course of four seasons.
Obviously, this a crossroads moment for the program, and the firing of VanGorder will be celebrated by the fans in the short term.
Long term, though, there’s something Kelly and only Kelly can fix.
His criticism of his team Saturday seemed to suggest that players don’t have a desire to work hard for results or that they don’t love football as much as they should.
“They can’t burn for a long time,” Kelly said. “There’s no passion for it. It looks like it’s hard to play, like we’re pulling teeth. You’re playing football for Notre Dame! It looks like it’s work! Last I checked they were getting a scholarship to play this game. There’s no fun, no enjoyment, no energy.”
Well, what’s the root cause of that?
Notre Dame fires defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder after Duke loss
The head coach’s job is to create the culture, hold everyone accountable to it and select players with the intangibles that fit its ethos. When that doesn’t happen, you lose games. And the nice thing about college football is there’s no general manager or bad draft luck to blame.
If a player doesn’t like football, is that the fault of the player or the coach who offered him a scholarship? You probably won’t hear Kelly address that anytime soon, which is why Notre Dame ranks as the most miserable fan base in college football this week.
(Disclaimer: This isn't a ranking of worst teams, worst losses or coaches whose jobs are in the most jeopardy. This is simply a measurement of a fan base's knee-jerk reaction to what they last saw. The way in which a team won or lost, expectations vis-à-vis program trajectory and traditional inferiority complex of fan base all factor into this ranking.)
FIVE MOST MISERABLE
1. Notre Dame: The VanGorder firing will resonate within the program because an in-season coaching change is the kind of thing Notre Dame just doesn’t do. Even when it was obvious the school had to fire Charlie Weis, Ty Willingham and Bob Davie, it waited until after the season was complete.
Unlike many of its counterparts, Notre Dame at least tries not to make college sports look as semi-professional as they really are, but this change was unavoidable. The odd thing for Notre Dame fans is why did it happen fewer than 24 hours after Kelly praised the coaching job being done by the staff and suggested it was the players' fault for not executing what they were calling?
Snap judgments from college football's Week 4
2. Southern California: What does Clay Helton’s buyout really look like? That was the question floating around the college football atmosphere on Saturday after the latest USC debacle in Utah, as the Trojans made a series of errors down the stretch that resulted in a 31-27 loss and a 1-3 start to this season with no end to the misery in sight.
Though former athletics director Pat Haden said last November that he gave Helton a five-year contract, USC is a private school and thus is not required to make its contracts public. So we don’t really know whether Helton’s contract is fully guaranteed for all five years or how much it would cost the school to buy him out. Those are now crucial questions, as Helton looks more and more like what he is: A good soldier who was well-suited to the interim role but seems to be in over his head running one of the top-five programs in college football.
The Trojans don’t deserve to be in this kind of disarray when you look at the roster and the depth of five-star talent at so many positions, but this is what happens when a bad administrator with a massive ego acts impulsively the way former athletics director Pat Haden did last fall to make Helton the permanent coach. It was a hare-brained plan from the start, and now it’s blowing up in USC’s face with a team that will be fortunate to reach 6-6 given the remaining schedule.
Because of their immense talent, the Trojans sometimes look like they do the big things well. But they do so many of the small things poorly that they will routinely get out-coached when it matters. USC fans have a right to demand better.
Colorado holds off Oregon rally to win 41-38
3. Oregon: We have never tested the theory of what happens when a program trending toward the Misery Index tries to reverse its slide by hiring a coach whose program used to be a mainstay on the Misery Index. But here’s our initial batch of results, courtesy of the Oregon Ducks: Not good. In a desperate attempt to turn around Oregon’s defense, head coach Mark Helfrich hired Brady Hoke as his coordinator.
Hoke, of course, is a splashy name because he used to be the head coach at Michigan, albeit a tenure that ended with multiple appearances on the Misery Index in his final season before the school fired him. Even more curious: Hoke had never been a coordinator at the college level, having gone straight from defensive line coach to his first head coaching job at Ball State in 2003. The results have been about what you’d expect: Oregon’s defense has been leaky all year and gave up 593 yards in Saturday’s 41-38 home loss to Colorado.
This was the clearest piece of evidence yet that Oregon in the post-Chip Kelly era has slipped from national relevance since making the championship game two years ago, and when you look at where the Ducks are trending in recruiting under Helfrich, it won’t be long before they’re operating with a talent deficit to go along with their coaching deficit. It’s hard to say how Nike founder and Oregon benefactor Phil Knight views the recent slide, but there should be some urgency to correcting course because the longer Oregon’s brand is out of the national picture, the harder it will be to get back.
4. LSU: If Saturday’s 18-13 loss to Auburn was Les Miles’ personal Waterloo — maybe not the game that explicitly gets him fired, but the one that sets the course for what happens next — it’s fitting that it came down to a clock management debacle. The (formerly) luckiest coach in college football, whose knack for surviving chaotic finishes was uncanny for a stretch of several years, has finally seen time run out.
LSU seemingly scored the winning touchdown Saturday at Auburn on the game’s final play, only to see it taken off the board as officials determined on replay that quarterback Danny Etling didn’t get the snap off in time. LSU is now 2-2 and will once again waste a season in which the best running back in college football graces its backfield. Here’s a crazy stat: LSU hasn’t scored a single point in the fourth quarter of any game this season.
That’s an indictment of so many things about LSU right now, and you have to think the breaking point is near for a school that was on the verge of making a change last season before deciding it couldn’t stomach his $11 million buyout.
No. 6 Stanford rallies past UCLA 22-13
5. UCLA: Bruins fans had to have that sinking feeling Saturday night when Stanford got the ball back with 1:58 remaining, needing to go 70 yards for a touchdown to get out of the Rose Bowl with a victory. Sometimes, no matter who the coaches are or how highly the players were ranked coming out of high school, it’s just impossible for a program to outrun its reputation.
UCLA folded again when it mattered most, allowing Stanford to drive the length of the field to ultimately win 22-13, of course aided by a silly 15-yard penalty for interference on the punt. Jim Mora is now 0-6 against Stanford, so at least he’s consistent.
But this does nothing to help UCLA’s reputation as a soft program that is annually overrated by media members who fixate on recruiting stars and potential. At 2-2, UCLA is once again well on its way to squandering opportunity in the Pac 12 South, which should be theirs for the taking with USC struggling and no other elite teams emerging.
MISERABLE, BUT NOT MISERABLE ENOUGH
Georgia Tech: There’s a massive problem when the entire bedrock of the program — Paul Johnson’s triple-option offense — becomes a non-functional entity against good teams. The Yellow Jackets were completely neutralized by Clemson on Thursday night in a 26-7 loss, managing just 124 yards. There’s no doubt that Clemson is one of the best defensive teams in the country, but this was hardly a one-off.
The Yellow Jackets have never been worse offensively under Johnson than they were last season, averaging just 256.7 rushing yards per game. (By contrast, they averaged 342.1 the prior season when they won the Orange Bowl.) This year, Georgia Tech also failed to hit 250 yards in its 17-14 season opening win over Boston College.
Penn State: As ESPN’s Chris Fallica tweeted out following Penn State’s 49-10 loss at Michigan, James Franklin is 0-18 as a head coach against teams that finished the season ranked and has never beaten an FBS opponent that finished with more than eight wins. Essentially, a narrative is hardening around Franklin: He racks up wins against bad teams but can’t beat good teams.
Once something like that takes hold with a fan base, it’s really hard to shake and impossible for his supporters to argue against. Even one good win won’t be enough to satisfy the masses; Franklin needs to start beating good teams consistently or he’ll fall further into that rhetorical hole.
Fresno State: The stakes coming into this season for Tim DeRuyter were clear. Either he would demonstrate that this proud program was pulling out of its free fall, or he would likely lose his job. So far, so bad. Fresno State is 1-3 this season and 5-17 in its last 22 games against FBS opponents.
Even worse, the Bulldogs blew a 31-0 lead against Tulsa on Saturday before falling 48-41 in two overtimes. DeRuyter was a hot name after winning 20 of his first 26 games as a head coach, but the last three years are simply unacceptable for someone who built his reputation as a good defensive coordinator.
How Amway Coaches Poll top 25 teams fared in Week 4
Northern Illinois: This is rock bottom for a fan base that just four years ago was celebrating a historic bid to the Orange Bowl. Saturday’s 28-23 loss to Western Illinois, an FCS program, was the seventh consecutive for Northern Illinois dating back to last season. The Huskies fell behind 28-7 entering the fourth quarter before mounting a comeback and actually had the ball with a chance to win late, but it wasn’t enough.
BYU: The problem with being an independent is the Cougars’ schedule is tilted toward the toughest games right out of the gate with no margin for error. BYU is 1-3 after a 35-32 loss to West Virginia in which quarterback Taysom Hill was intercepted at the goal line as the Cougars were driving for a late tying or go-ahead score. Combined with a 20-19 loss to Utah on a failed two-point conversion and a 17-14 loss to UCLA, the Cougars just seem snakebitten.
Even worse, there’s really no path to anything meaningful because there’s no conference title or major bowl bid to play for. If you’re a BYU fan today, what do you have to get excited about or engage your passion for the final eight games of the season?
No. 21 Ole Miss routs No. 11 Georgia
TOO SHOCKED TO BE MISERABLE
Georgia: Kirby Smart is fortunate that Georgia fans are going to blame the 45-14 loss to Ole Miss on Mark Richt, but the grace period won’t last long. Richt, after all, hadn’t given up 45 points since 2011 and rarely lost a game in such lopsided fashion over his 15 seasons.
Florida State: Though the Seminoles rebounded from the Louisville disaster to beat South Florida 55-35, there’s still something off in that locker room. Jimbo Fisher’s snippy postgame media session was revealing: He’s not happy with the progress this team is making, particularly on the defensive side where there’s simply too much talent to be this generous.
Michigan State: Just when the Spartans’ fan base was getting excited about what this team might be capable of in a transition year with quarterback Tyler O’Connor, he threw three interceptions and Michigan State got blown out at home by Wisconsin, 30-6. Mark Dantonio is a great coach, but the mythical notion that he can hide obvious limitations over a full season just isn’t realistic.
Bowling Green: One year after winning the MAC title under Dino Babers, who parlayed his success into the Syracuse job, the Falcons have absolutely collapsed. Yes, Bowling Green lost its coach, its quarterback and its best receiver among other key parts. Still, the Falcons lost 77-3 at Memphis and have been outscored 195-34 against three FBS opponents this season.
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Wyoming: Craig Bohl was the architect of North Dakota State’s rise to prominence in the FCS, but he couldn’t resist the opportunity to test himself at the FBS level. So far, it’s been a disaster. If Bohl can’t win at Wyoming, who can? He’s 8-20 overall and has lost in consecutive years to Eastern Michigan, which formerly held the mantle of the worst program in FBS.
FIVE TOTALLY REAL AND IRRATIONAL MESSAGE BOARD THREADS
►“I don’t think we’ve ever had a more loathsome coach.” — NDnation.com (Notre Dame)
►“The player revolt is real.” — dawgvent.com (Georgia)
►“Hard to believe we are now considered a ‘cupcake’ " — USCfootball.com
►“Woke up and still want to PUKE” — bruinreportonline.com (UCLA)
►“Time to start watching Flight Aware?” — tigerdroppings.com (LSU)
HIGHLIGHTS FROM WEEK 4
