If our quarterback was a fictional character rather than a real person, he would be read as the little girl with a little curl right in the middle of her forehead; when she was good she was very very good but when she was bad she was horrid. Or Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde if you have gender issues. But we're not dealing with a fictional character [nor one in Coach Kelly] so simplistic evaluations do them no service. Let me take the "easy" one first----------------------------------------------------Brian Kelly. He yells. He wins. His players typically love him. Manti has told us that he has never yelled at him without then telling him what he did wrong in a teaching mode. We can choose to believe that or not, but that is what Manti said. [I chose Manti to quote rather than the similar ones from Crist himself because people might doubt Crist's frankness since he takes most of the flak]. I'm going to assume that yelling is pretty standard practice on the practice field---this therefore is not unusual behavior and hardly shocks the players when it happens---you could see Massa and Hendrix giggling about some of it in the second half [admittedly behind coach's back]. The "technique" has worked for Kelly apparently on both the practical and psychological levels, and he makes it right by going over and congratulating the guys when they "do good".-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now the tougher one:Crist. Because he can be Jekyll or Hyde at this stage of his career, people are going to split [not spit] on him. He's great/he's terrible. Actually he's neither one. He's a young talent of tremendous promise who is carrying a huge burden of learning coupled with inexperience. And he has a coach who knows it, and says EVERYTIME to the media that they're holding back a lot of the offense until Dayne gets more comfortable with it. On some things Dayne's there. On some things he is very confused. [by the way, Dayne cannot possibly be the only guy on NDs offense who is occasionally confused--we should not be so sure that every failure is his fault]. That's what we're seeing. I wonder how many other QBs in his situation would be any different. Each of us has a choice [which,by the way, will disturb the rest of the Universe's path not one Planck length---except others on the board who choose to get their testosterone up and start hurling epithets]: we can see Crist as an arrested development who will never be good enough for us, or we can see him as teaming with Kelly on an upward path of evolution to being a great ND leader. I'm trusting Crist to get there. I'm trusting Kelly even more. He's climbed that mountain successfully many times.
