Notre Dame Football: 5 biggest storylines following spring 2018
By Jacob Wilson
With spring festivities nearing an end, here are a few storylines to follow as Notre Dame football prepares for summer.
Head coach Brian Kelly has had a decent amount of success as a Notre Dame coach, but hasn’t been able to take the Irish all the way since joining the program in 2010. He has, however, managed to turn his team around quickly following a disastrous 2016 season. After going 4-8 in that year, Kelly had Notre Dame sitting at a much improved 10-3 record in 2017.
Along with a new season comes new players, coaches, and decisions. The Irish have plenty of all three of those this year and will undoubtedly be a fun team to follow. However, there are a few storylines that are more prevalent than others. Here are five of them to monitor as we draw closer to the regular season.
5. How will Brian Kelly fare against elite competition?
In terms of elite competition, the Irish don’t exactly have much on their schedule as it sits right now. As of now, the Irish have four ranked opponents on their schedule including Stanford (20), Virginia Tech (24), Northwestern (17), and USC (12). Florida State is also a potential top 10 candidate in the case that Deondre Francois is able to return them to their 2016 state.
At the end of the day, there’s a good chance that one or two of these teams sneak into the top 10, perhaps by the time they face Notre Dame. If this is the case, Brian Kelly will once again have the chance to improve on what has been a less than impressive stretch against top 15 competition. Currently, Kelly is 8-13 vs. top 15 opponents and 2-6 vs. top 10 opponents as a Notre Dame head coach.
This will need to change, and there’s no better time than the present. The Irish have a significantly talented roster with depth on both sides of the ball, but they’ll need to iron out all the kinks if they want to make it deep into the playoff picture. Today’s competition is arguably better than ever at the top, so Kelly will need to really figure things out if he wants to compete with the best of the best.
Again, Kelly has the talent and personnel to do so. However, the Irish have been unable to finish down the stretch under his leadership. The Irish draw some interesting competition in the early going of the 2018 season, so we might get a good look at how the rest of the season may progress based on the team’s performance against the likes of Stanford, Virginia Tech and others.