HJS {l Wrote}:Dick Rosenthal {l Wrote}:flyingelvii {l Wrote}:He got paid and got lucky. Like 8 things had to happen for him to get the ND position starting with him choosing ND over LSU, Cincy making the playoffs to take Fickell off the market, Coach O pissing off boosters two years after a National Championship, Lincoln Riley choosing USC, and I’m sure others. Better to be lucky than good.
Yes, a lot of luck involved, but the fact that he took ND over LSU showed some awareness. Elko did not have that sort of awareness when he took the money and jumped ship to A&M, which did nothing but hurt his reputation as a defensive genius--especially when coupled with the fact that Lea came in and the defense outperformed what it did under Elko (more as a result of improved recruiting that anything Lea did, but it didn't help). Lea's decision is even more baffling. I know he is an alum, but Vandy is where promising coaches go to kill their careers. Yes, Franklin did well by Vandy standards (6-7, 9-4, 8-4) but benefitted from a few very unique historical anomalies within the SEC all happening at the same time (specifically Ole Miss, Tennessee, Florida and Kentucky being bad beyond any historical norms all at the same time). Lea should have avoided that job like the plague and banked the current 11-1 season. While he admittedly would have been clairvoyant to see Kelly being lured away by LSU, I am guessing that Lea would have been a top candidate for the ND job had he still been there and at the very least would have been a candidate for some of the better available jobs that opened this year.
Nothing in this explanation is an argument that speaks to Freeman being anything other than lucky.
After multiple years, Elko leaves for more money... defense was just as good under Lea... which proves it was really about talent and not coaching ability of either coach...
After multiple years, Lea leaves for more money... defense wasn't as good under Freeman... which proves it was really about talent and not coaching ability of either coach...
After a few months, Freeman is rewarded as head coach based on his brilliant career move of not leaving for another job during the season.
I'd note that, during the season, Domers were happy about Freeman's recruiting... less so his coaching. Started the year giving up a ton of points to the likes of FSU, Toledo, VT and UNC. Combine that with a Cincy loss, plenty ND alums were underwhelmed. But, ND ended the year with the gauntlet of QB-less teams in USNA, UVA, GT and Stanford. Freeman's D inflated season stats by surrendering a mere combined 23 points. Huzzah!!! No-brainer hire! JurkWatch forever, Tommy Rees never!
I never said luck wasn't a large part of it, but there are certain choices made by Elko and Lea that were bad decisions on their face. In Elko's case, wringing every dime out of A&M in a place where he was not likely to succeed as well at Notre Dame. A&M offered Elko a boatload of money, but he took that offer back to Notre Dame who promptly matched it before Elko shopped that counter back to A&M and wrung out an extra $200K from them. When you are slated to make $1.7 million, this is stupid and self-defeating. He destroyed any goodwill he had at Notre Dame, he pissed off some in the A&M community, and he entered the SEC with less talent than three or four teams he had to play each year. Elko stays at Notre Dame, he makes a couple of CFPs and leads two top 5 defenses and by now he is sitting in a decent P5 head coaching job instead of Duke--quite literally one of the three worst P5 football jobs out there. And he is sitting at Duke because, predictably, he went from being the defensive genius who started landing high 4 star DL and LB recruits at Notre Dame running a lock down defense to being the guy whose defense was getting torched on the regular--because the offensive talent in the SEC is off the charts--and getting out recruited at A&M (even though he was bringing in just as many 4 star recruits at A&M) because his primary rivals in conference feast on illiterate 5 stars. He is also perceived as an untrustworthy dick in some quarters because of the money grubbing thing. All foreseeable and something a savvy coach would have avoided.
It's probably even more pronounced for Lea. He shuns Vandy, which every reasonable savvy coach who isn't desperate for a head coaching opportunity does (people forget that Franklin took the Vandy job because he and Randy Edsall hated each other and he was about to get fired at Maryland) he is probably sifting through some very good opportunities this year--I was told by a prominent VT grad that they were willing to chuck Fuentes over the side at the end of last year to get Lea, but Lea turned them down to take the Vandy gig. And while as previously discussed, VT ain't the job it was a decade ago, its a damn sight better than Vandy. And as with Lea, all of the problems he has now are entirely foreseeable.
As for Freeman, he turned down an extra $150K for ND because he was savvy enough to see that it was, at least at that point in time, a better job in pretty much every way than the LSU gig. He recognized that expectations would be relatively modest at ND after a playoff appearance and being a good talent evaluator, recognized that ND probably had more 1st and 2nd round talent on its defensive roster than LSU and a schedule that would help him get his feet under him in his first year on the big stage. That's what a savvy coach does and it worked to his benefit--the D was shitty the first two games while it got used to his new scheme, but was fortunate that it was against two teams that the offense could score on. After that, the defense looked pretty good to dominant. Even the Cincy game, the defense was good--offense basically gave up 10 points and left another 9-21 points on the table with poor play and horrendous Kelly-dominated play calling. Yes, Freeman certainly lucked into the ND job, but he made a couple of savvy decisions that his two predecessors were not smart enough to make. Even if he hadn't landed the ND job, at the end of this past season he'd have been looking at taking over at Cincinnati or would have been a serious candidate for the Tech and UVA gigs or heading out to work for Riley as a DC for north of $2 million or two a DC slot at one of the open SEC gigs or staying at ND for another year under Kelly with a raise to go along with it and some incoming 5 star talent on defense.