Solid class but I think we’re overrating Freeman’s recruiting ability while underrating Kelly’s. Yea I said it. Kelly gets labeled a “lazy recruiter” yet he was doing An in home visit last year while he had a foot out the door. And his personality clearly hasn’t scared away recruits from LSU. Freeman for all his hype, basically just hit the previous ceiling for ND recruiting. Kelly left ND for LSU, and LSU continued to recruit to the LSU standard while ND continued to recruit to the ND standard. Both coaches reach #9 in their first full year recruiting classes at ND. I don’t really look to much into average rating comparison because if you look at the top 10 from 2011 compared to 2023, their is a solid 2-3 point composite difference for all the teams average player rating.
Basically nothing has changed, it’s hope that Carr is a stud (and sticks to his commitment) or bust for this program’s title chances.
The Kelly standard at ND was far less than what Freeman has done - just in terms of overall class ranking and cumulative player ratings. All it takes is a competent coach to have great recruiting success. LSU pretty much sells itself (Huge brand, past success, many NFL players at every position, playing in the SEC) and the certain academic requirements at LSU give it a larger recruiting pool of players to work with. Louisiana also has so much more talent than the state of Indiana, so Kelly doesn't need truly worry about national recruiting, when he can predominantly recruit regionally - Louisiana, Alabama, Texas & Georgia.
Kelly still doing his job with one foot out the door is the bare minimum that a coach can do. Every coach does it, even if they know or feel like they may be moving onto another job. That is not an outlier.
If you don't want to look at ratings, that's fine, I understand that it's not the only metric point to determine overall success, however, there is a clear difference between the effort, mindset, and determination that Freeman puts forth when it comes to recruiting than what Kelly had done. There have been so many instances of Kelly essentially only making contact as a "final closer", as opposed to the the main guy pushing and contacting the recruit weekly - as we've seen reported from various commitments. Freeman has been the larger driving force in most of these athletes recruitments.
It's possible that Kelly knew that certain barriers that would prevent him from recruiting to a consistently great standard. It's more than likely the case. But, Kelly got tired at a certain point. Maybe it's age related, and maybe he just felt the fatigue of it all.
Freeman acknowledges the limitations that he has to contend with at ND, but he doesn't ****ing care. He's not going to stop. He understands what needs to be done at ND to get the program on a consistent championship/playoff level. He still has a lot to learn about being a head coach and running a program, but he knows the importance of recruiting.
