Notre Dame has started cleaning house after a three-loss start to their season, having fired defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder.
Things have not started off well in 2016 for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Brian Kelly’s squad is off to a 1-3 start to their season, and now the house cleaning has begun with the firing of his defensive coordinator.
On Sunday, it was announced that the school had fired Brian VanGorder and it’s hardly a surprise. Notre Dame has surrendered 134 points in their first four games of the season, for an just over 33 points per game.
That’s not going to get it done if you want to hang with the big boys of College Football. Right now, the season is pretty much lost for the Irish, and the question now becomes how hot is Brian Kelly’s seat starts to get as the slide in South Bend continues.
It’s not a certainty at this point, but you have to start asking yourself when it’s feasible to question his job status. That argument could be made now, as even though no changes are expected to be made in the coming weeks, the tides are beginning to turn. Sacrificing staff members is a slippery slope to losing your own job, and that’s where Kelly is right now. He’s back peddling hard after this start to the season for Notre Dame and things need to change.
Kelly’s time in South Bend might be coming to an end if this downward spiral continues. As the coaching crop in college football gets better and stronger, Notre Dame needs to find someone who can make the program into a perennial threat. Kelly looked like he was onto something a few years ago but the glean has rusted.
It’s also not as though it would be hard to sell coaches on a job as prestigious as coaching Notre Dame. The only question is whether or not Kelly can kill off his staff long enough to distract someone from coming for his own head.