It's true I don't know as much about football as Kelly does, or as many of you do. I also don't know as much as my mechanic does about my car, but I can tell if it's running okay or not, and can reason my way through to some general opinions and thoughts. It's a football chat room, not a council vote on SALT IV talks, so notwithstanding my own limitations, I will offer some opinions....
Special Teams. Booker. -- I think you have to divide this, because there are disparate aspect of this job; it's true of all coaching slots, to an extent, but really different here because placekicking, punting, kickoffs, kick returns, and kick coverage, are all distinctly different matters. (I recently learned that Marv Levy, along with Dick Vermeil, were the first two (solely) special teams coaches in the NFL; at least that's what Marv said in an interview I heard. Before that, they just had one of the other coaches spend a few minutes a week on it.)
For our purposes, I thought Booker did well on place kicking, punting, and kickoffs (generally speaking (B+ or better)), better (hard not to be) than last year on punt returns (C+ for improvement and no turnovers I can remember), okay on KO returns (steady but not great, and no turnovers -- B), and awful, just awful, on kick coverage (D). Don't understand why this last part if so bad.
O Line. Heistand. -- again, I'd divide between run blocking (C+/B-), pass blocking (A) and intangibles (A-).
The running game was inconsistent and I think the RBs are good enough that they'd hit most holes if they were there.
Pass blocking -- I really cannot overstate how remarkable it is that they had only, what?, 7 sacks this year. It's one thing if they can't sack Michael Vick or Marotta; but Tommy is like Michaelangelo's David back there. Granted, Tommy gets an assist, because he was pretty good (sometimes a little too good) at getting rid of the ball quickly. But that's still a remarkable achievement, and this was not against an Ohio State schedule full of Dalai Lama pass rushers (the best sacking opponent OSU had was Nebby, tied at 9th, then Penn St tied at 39th). ND faced three teams who are in the top ten of sacks this year -- AZ St #6, and USC and Stanford #9 (in last stats available), plus Mich State at 34th. Add in the injuries, and it's really quite a job.
Intangibles -- I mean, spirit, avoiding dumb penalties, next man in quality -- A-.
OC. Martin -- You have to grade him on the curve because he had a tough hand dealt him. But (and I won't belabor it here), I think he or Kelly overrated Tommy's skill-set and had him make too many throws not in his wheelhouse. Tommy's more of 20 yard and under guy, with a few bombs (not too too long) included for strategic purposes, but I think they had more +20 yard attempts than were prudent (I'd like to research this.). I also did not like the tendency to pass, even when the running game was working. I also don't care for frequent first down passing, esp. when the running game is working. But there's a lot here behind the curtain, so I'll just give him a C+ and leave it at that, because he did well enough to outscore AZ State and come back in a respectable game on the road vs Stanford and, with Tommy, he didn't have a QB run option at all so it's smaller playbook.
Defense. Diaco. I know we were disappointed, based on last year's success, but we lost a lot, of course, to graduation, and then through the year, lost a lot to injuries. Michigan was an inexplicable loss, except that Gardner played the game of his career against us. Yeah, Oky scored a lot, but those were on or off of, turnovers. Still don't get what's so hard about the Navy option; we see it every year, and this year, saw it a week after Air Force's less efficient option. That's puzzling and a negative. But in sum, the defense, really, nearly single handedly, beat USC (esp under great pressure once Tommy was knocked out), and they pretty much controlled AZ State and they out-defensed a good Mich St team that was not going to give up many points. With all the injuries, missed plays, missed games -- I just have to give a Diaco a gentleman's B+.
Kelly -- Hard to know which of the criticisms goes to him rather than the individual coaches (gameplans?) and I'll be surprised if he doesn't make some coaching changes. Here's what I give Kelly praise for -- continuing the trend away from the Weis malaise years, being willing to play freshmen, keeping the team playing hard throughout every game (excepting Pitt, for which they looked flat), which I think is much harder than it looks, beating Southern Cal, and winning 8 games (maybe 9) in spite of a lot of adversity. So, in a tough year -- big losses on the roster, many injuries, post 2012 letdown, tough schedule, QB depth issues not of his making -- I'd give Kelly a B+.
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