Brian Kelly needs to stop blaming Kizer

The 15th best college quarterback in the nation isn’t the reason we lost

If you were at the Notre Dame-Duke game last Saturday, there was no missing the constant chants in the student section of “Fire VanGorder,” referring to the former defensive coordinator who was fired the very next day.  As the game became almost too depressing to watch, VanGorder quickly became the face of everything going wrong with Notre Dame’s defense.

Many students and football fans voiced the opinion that Brian Kelly’s decision had been a long time coming. “I was saying it through the game and I’ll say it again now: ND’s loss to Duke was a good thing in the long run.  Nothing would have changed if ND had beaten Duke and ended up having a mediocre three or four loss season.  Now we’ll have changes and maybe be able to escape our current trend of two loss seasons where we never quite make it to the top,” said Ryan D’Antonio, a current junior.

Kelly’s comments immediately following Saturday’s game, however, caused considerable confusion.  For one thing, the postgame conference led many fans and students to initially believe VanGorder was here to stay. When asked about the defensive coordinator then, Kelly responded “Actually, [coaching is]  probably the one area that I feel better about today.”  This statement came less than twelve hours before the news broke that VanGorder had been fired.

More controversial, though, were Kelly’s criticisms of quarterback DeShone Kizer. In the same conference, the head coach called Kizer’s play “below standard” and “not acceptable.” According to the online national rankings, Kizer is ranked as the 15th best college QB in the country and was responsible for passing for 381 yards in the Duke game, a career high.

If Notre Dame scored 35 points and still lost, the fault is clearly with our defensive strategy—something Kelly evidently knows if he chose to fire VanGorder, yet he still felt it necessary to blame a player who was one of the only bright spots in our team’s performance that game.

BK should recognize what Kizer does for the team and stop with the misplaced blame—it’s not helping anyone.

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