New collaborative effort
Irish will use three coaches this season for play-calling.
It sounds like a promising sitcom pilot or maybe just the exhuming of an old one. Three’s Company? That’s the company line at least that head coach Brian Kelly is selling about how offensive play-calling will shake down in 11th-ranked Notre Dame’s season opener with Texas Saturday night — and for the foreseeable future.
“We are going to collaborate,” Kelly said Tuesday.
The “we” in the equation are first-year offensive coordinator Mike Sanford, long-time Kelly confidant and assistant head coach/wide receivers coach Mike Denbrock and Kelly.
In his previous 24 seasons as a college head coach, Kelly has largely called his own plays. A one-year deviation in 2013 to former offensive coordinator Chuck Martin, now the head coach at Miami (Ohio), is a notable exception.
Denbrock didn’t deny, though, he had a larger hand in that role during Notre Dame’s Music City Bowl victory over LSU in December.
“I know you guys want more,” Kelly said to the media when pressed for the mechanics of how the collaboration is designed to work. “I’m just not going to give you much more than all three of us are collaborating. How it comes out to the signaller, we’re all in unison as to how we want the game to unfold.
“So we are all going to be working off the same play sheet. We are going to all be working off the same openers. We are going to all be working off the same down and distance sheet. So whether it’s coming out of Mike or Mike or Brian’s lips, is really immaterial as far as I’m concerned.”
What is material, or at least intriguing, is what the Sanford influence might look like, moving forward.
Kelly’s hiring of the 33-year-old represents a notable departure in the way the Irish head coach has done business when it comes to hiring coaches so close to the offensive decision-making process.
Familiarity has been Kelly’s comfort zone. This time he intentionally moved away from that.
That’s even coming off Notre Dame’s best national rankings under Kelly in total offense (32nd), passing offense (18th) scoring offense (38th), passing efficiency (30th) and third-down conversion percentage (14th), to go along with a troubling 98 ranking out of 125 in turnovers lost.