The biggest thing I'm nervous about with Freeman is that over the last few years we've had a huge amount of what's been called "culture wins." We won nearly 100% of the games that we always seemed to lose under Weis and Willingham where the team has bad luck, gets unexpectedly punched in the mouth, or is put in a "do or die" situation. There's been a strong attempt recently by ND media to attribute nearly all of that "can't lose" culture to Ballis and not to BK, but I'm not convinced. I don't think it's coincidental that the team experienced a strong momentum swing and couldn't recover in our very first game without BK steering the ship.
Also we had quite a few moments last year where our situational defense was doodoo. I'm hopeful Golden is going to have a positive impact on that. Giving up quick scoring drives just before halftime is a killer and it happened so many times last year.
I think your memory is failing you a bit here.
Prior to Balis arriving, ND had A LOT of bad, almost inexplicable losses under Kelly.
2010: (3 bad losses) Losing in the final seconds to Rich Rod's Michigan, getting blown out by Navy, losing to Tulsa.
2011: (3 bad losses) South Florida, losing in the final seconds to Michigan again, the debacle against USC after a BYE.
2013: (2 bad losses) Getting pushed around by a mediocre Michigan team, losing to a mediocre Pitt squad
2014: (4 bad losses) Turnover-palooza in Tempe, losing to an awful NW team at home, Louisville and the abomination that was the SC game.
2016: (SEVEN bad losses) I can't get into all of them, but the fact that ND went 4-8, when their schedule was pretty damn easy is an indictment of how poor the program was at that point. 3 of their losses came to teams that finished the year with losing records.
In the first 7 seasons of Kelly's tenure, there was really only 2 seasons where there wasn't that WTF loss, and a lot of that had to do with simply have more talent and the quality leadership of those units.
Suddenly, 2017 rolls around and Balis is hired. Suddenly, this team looks physically and mentally tougher and is winning the games they should win. There was still the occasional head-scratching no-show to a solid program like Miami or Michigan. But there wasn't that inexplicable loss to garbage teams like South Florida, Duke or Northwestern.
This wasn't simply a thing that Kelly fixed himself. He had to revamp the S&C program that had deteriorated under Longo. Balis came in and almost immediately improved everything by leaps and bounds. Since 2017, the team appears to be in better shape physically and they always seem to have quality leadership, year to year. Meanwhile from '10 to '16, the only years where that was the case was '12 and '15.
