People forget Kelly was bringing basketball on grass to ND we he came. He was winning games at Cincy 50-49.
But he was smart enough to realize what Jeff Brohm, Tom Herman, Matt Campbell, etc… never did, and that that kind of gameplanning gets you a big win over Oklahoma (Herman at Houston) or over OSU (Brohm at Purdue), but those wins don’t matter if you lose 3-4 other games against bad teams.
Kelly realized what he needed to do to just win games, boring or not.
I hope Freeman figures that out. Last year he was what I warned fans against when they wanted Hernan or Brohm back in the day, he beat Clemson but lost to Marshall & horrible Stanford.
Freeman needs to learn Kelly’s consistency along with his uptick in recruiting.