Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1431491
www.BLUEANDGOLD.com NOV. 27, 2021 7 UNDER THE DOME If The Irish Finish 11-1, Without A Doubt By Tyler Horka Remember when the sky was falling in South Bend in early October? Notre Dame had just lost at home to Cincinnati. Fans pondered if the Irish could limp to an 8-4 record. Some suggested the ceiling was 9-3. The offensive line was a train wreck. Graduate student quarterback Jack Coan was benched in consecutive games. Nothing was going right for the Irish. Nearly two months later, all is right in Notre Dame land. The only things falling in South Bend are snow- flakes and the opponents Notre Dame keeps playing. After dispatching Virginia on the road in Charlottesville, the Irish pulled within two wins of an 11-win regular season. Kelly has only previously accomplished that feat twice. The Irish have been one of the best five programs in the last five years under Kelly, but 11-win regular sea- sons are as rare as a comfortably warm day in northern Indiana past Halloween. They don't come often. That's why this has to be billed as Kelly's best coach- ing job in his 12-year Irish tenure. Yes, he took the 2012 team to the national championship game. And he has taken two other teams to the College Football Playoff. But this Notre Dame team was dead in the water just a few weeks ago, and it has all turned around. Many other programs would have caved and folded in Notre Dame's midseason position. The Irish, though, seemingly got better with each game. Kelly deserves a boatload of credit for that. No, 2017 Brought Greater Challenges By Todd D. Burlage My talented colleague, Tyler Horka, does a great job of outlining the myriad challenges Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly faced holding this sea- son together and keeping his Irish on track for a fifth straight campaign with 10 or more wins. And Horka is correct, 2021 clearly is one of Kelly's best coaching jobs during his 12 seasons on the Notre Dame sideline. But with that said, this 2021 season is a continuation of sustained on- field and recruiting success, and it never brought anywhere near the urgency or the challenges from 2017 when Kelly needed a complete program teardown and rebuild after his team's 4-8 nosedive in 2016. Understanding that offseason that status quo must go, Kelly brought in a new offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator and special teams coach. In all, five of Notre Dame's nine position groups had new coaches in 2017. "We failed and I failed," Kelly admitted while organizing a full pro- gram reset in the preseason of 2017. Kelly reinvented his program and himself, becoming more approach- able and accessible to his players, and more willing to delegate respon- sibilities to his staff and assistants instead of trying to do everything himself. The changes and improvements immediately rooted. Notre Dame went 10-3 in 2017, it beat LSU in a bowl game, and it made two playoff appearances in the three seasons following his program rebuild, making that season from five years ago not only Kelly's best one as a coach, but arguably the best season for any Irish coach in program history. Point ✦ Counterpoint: IS THIS BRIAN KELLY'S BEST SEASON AS HEAD COACH AT NOTRE DAME? When asked after his fifth-seeded Irish shocked the men's soccer world by winning their first-ever ACC championship with four straight shutout wins, Notre Dame sophomore goalkeeper Bryan Dowd explained that an unlikely title run that came in mid-November actually began way back in mid-August. Picked three months ago in the preseason to finish last in the six-team ACC Coastal Division, Dowd isn't shy to share that a little preseason disrespect is helping to fuel some big postseason results and dreams. In its magical four-game ACC title run — a tournament that many soccer analysts believe is harder to win than the NCAA Championship — No. 5-seeded Notre Dame defeated No. 12 NC State (1-0); No. 4 Louisville (0-0/3-0 PKs); No. 1 Pitt (2-0); and No. 3 Duke (2-0). Notre Dame (12-5-3) earned the No. 4 national seed in the 48-team 2021 NCAA Championship, providing it an opening-round bye and a second- round home game against the winner of the first- round matchup between Vermont (13-4-2) and Villanova (11-7-1) Nov. 21. Blue & Gold Illustrated caught up with Dowd after he saved all eight of the shots he took in the ACC Championship, not including the three saves he made against Louisville on penalty kicks in a quarterfinal win. In all, 11 shots on net, 11 saves, and four shutouts for Dowd and the Irish. BGI: Notre Dame won its first ACC title in nine seasons. Where did that unexpected performance and locker room motivation come from? Dowd: "Entering the tournament, we kind of had that underdog mind- set. Being picked dead last to start the year, that was kind of in the back of our minds this entire time. "That was the buzz in the locker room, and it kind of set the tone for the year, thinking, 'If nobody be- lieves in us, then we need to prove some people wrong.'" BGI: How much momentum can the team take from winning the toughest conference champion- ship in the country? Dowd: "If we can win the ACC Tournament, it proves that if we can be the champions of the best conference in the nation, playing against some of the top teams in the country, we can beat anyone. This wasn't a one-shot deal. "This was repeatedly beating some of the best teams in the country. Our confidence is really high right now." BGI: Trying to win the first-ever ACC title for Notre Dame is a big deal. How did you handle the pressure of the final game? Dowd: "My mindset going in was just to approach it like any other game. I had approached the previ- ous three games that way, that's a must. It really helps when you take it game by game, and minute by minute, just doing whatever job is in front of you. "We stayed with that mindset the entire time and it led to four shutouts." BGI: What's next? Dowd: "We've checked one box now, and the only one left is to win the national tournament. We are in no way con- tent with just winning this one trophy. We want two this year." BGI: On a personal note, how did you end up at Notre Dame? Dowd: "I always grew up kind of knowing about Notre Dame, just learning about the prestige and hearing people talking about it. "When I was visiting other schools [during re- cruitment], I was giving everybody an even play- ing field, but it was pretty obvious how Notre Dame separates itself from the others. It became a clear choice." — Todd D. Burlage Five Questions With … MEN'S SOCCER GOALKEEPER BRYAN DOWD DOWD Kelly is closing in on his third season with at least 11 wins during his 12-year tenure at Notre Dame. PHOTO BY KEITH LUCAS