Of course, Bearcat players and fans alike were saying how their practices are now faster than before and they're in better shape and that now their coach is more personable and it's more of a family-type atmosphere. How's that working out for you guys?
Yeah, but what do you expect them to say? They knew their success was wrapped up in Kelly; after he left, nothing to do but grandstand and talk a big game to try to convince themselves that they were still the cream of the Big East. There's a lot of evidence the Kelly overperformed with the Bearcats considering their Rivals talent level, with a good article
at Football Outsiders. The summary portion:
Here is the three-year overachiever list, with numbers.
1. TCU (+44.0/season)
2. Cincinnati (+43.5)
3. Boise State (+39.1)
4. Florida (+35.1)
5. Navy (+32.7)
Clashmoremike had an article a while back, same idea but looking at average scoring margin (kind of a Bill James Pythagorean for football, not quite as good but still an R^2 value of 0.92) - to which they
sum up:
Over the course of the last five seasons, Kelly’s teams have outperformed their expected winning percentage by an average of almost eight percent. What this means is that, on average, a Kelly-coached team has won at least one more game per season than it was expected to.
So yeah, I think they had a lot to fear as far as a drop off.
