Notre Dame’s roster is a hybrid composed of players Charlie Weis and Brian Kelly recruited. Here’s a look at how the most prominent ones of each coach have developed.
Offense
Everett Golson, QB:
A talent Kelly specifically plucked and developed specifically for an offense that (eventually) features quarterback run and spread-option alternatives. While Golson has demonstrated some strides late in 2012, maybe no player reflects and will reflect the competency of his coaching staff more than the sophomore starter. He’s the guy. Kelly, offensive coordinator Chuck Martin and Co. have to nudge him to another level starting in 2013.
Tommy Rees, QB:
The Lake Forest High product did not arrive at Notre Dame as a finished product. But he essentially fell into Kelly’s lap as an early enrollee in the winter of the coaching transition, while also carrying along the intrinsic football intelligence of a coach’s son. Weis is due credit for seeing the steady hand Rees might provide, which more or less saved a couple of games for Notre Dame in 2012. Kelly is due credit for making a borderline bizarre quarterback operation work this year.
Theo Riddick/Cierre Wood, RBs:
Neither were Kelly recruits, and judging by his late-season surge and indefatigable effort at USC, Riddick may well have been out of position as a slot receiver in the first two years of the Kelly era. It is worth mentioning that any critical backfield work done in 2011 and 2012 has been done by Weis recruits — Jonas Gray, Wood and Riddick — while a Kelly player such as George Atkinson III has shown only flashes. That said, it was Kelly’s staff who got something out of Gray last year and Riddick this year that hadn’t been there before, for various reasons.
Tyler Eifert, TE:
Weis evaluated Eifert during a summer camp workout and apparently saw a playmaker where others did not. After a back injury kept him out of action as a freshman, Eifert has developed into a Mackey Award winner and an almost surefire NFL first-round draft pick in April. He is an unmistakable Weis contribution. Given Kelly’s openness to developmental talent, though, it’s not far-fetched to think he would have made the same scholarship offer to a kid from Fort Wayne, Ind. And Kelly, from the start, did assure Eifert he could be a star. The confidence in Eifert’s talent was evident immediately.
Zack Martin, OT:
The best Notre Dame offensive lineman three years running was on campus when Kelly arrived. He found a self-starting perfectionist who, in 2012, barely made any mistakes, grading high on a consistent basis and dominating some ballyhooed talent across the line. That Martin essentially is on his third offensive line coach also suggests that, in some ways, he deserves a lot of credit for how good he is. But Martin also has had back-to-back coaches with solid reputations for producing results in Ed Warinner and now Harry Hiestand.
Braxston Cave, C:
Kelly would have enjoyed the same success recruiting the third-team All-American center as Weis did: All either would have had to do is offer a scholarship, and the Granger, Ind., native would have taken it. So credit Kelly, and the strength staff under Paul Longo, for tapping into Cave’s affinity for the weight room and transforming him into a stout, well-conditioned spread offense center who wound up being considered among the best at his position in the country. Cave himself has said he used the coaching transition as a fresh start.
Davaris Daniels, WR:
If a big-play receiver emerges at Notre Dame in the near future, it will be a talent that Kelly brought on board, and it’s likely to be the Vernon Hills product that is completing his first year of game action. (Speedster Chris Brown also qualifies as a distinct possibility.) It has been a slow ascent with Daniels grasping the finer points of what Kelly wants. But if he recovers from a broken clavicle to make even one or two big-chunk grabs against Alabama, it may be all Notre Dame needs.
Defense
Louis Nix, NG:
Nix was as critical a recruiting get for Weis — though he committed after Weis was fired and before Kelly was hired — and holdover for Kelly as there could be in the transition recruiting class that signed in February 2010. Nix was the prototype, high-level defensive lineman Notre Dame long sought and long struck out on before being lured to the Midwest. It was the strength and conditioning and nutrition work under Kelly — and the psychological work done on a Florida player who felt homesick at times — that transformed Nix into a player who may consider the NFL jump this offseason.
Stephon Tuitt, DE:
A Kelly component through and through, there is no debate. But Tuitt is notable because he is precisely the kind of player Notre Dame needed to compete on a championship level. The Georgia native is a freak athlete that would not be out of place on any SEC defensive line, a five-star difference-maker in the front four that is mandatory for an elite defense. It doesn’t mean getting more of them will be easy, but at least Tuitt opened the door.
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Kapron Lewis-Moore, DE:
One of the Weis-recruited old guard, he provided leadership and career-best production as a fifth-year player. He seemingly was in line to lose his starting role until Aaron Lynch transferred, which turned out to be the ultimate addition-by-subtraction scenario. Lewis-Moore was steady, reliable and probably motivated by the perceived shunting to the second-tier while Lynch was around. He’s another player who’s progress and production may belong to himself as much as anyone.
Manti Te’o, LB:
Kelly had absolutely nothing to do with bringing to campus one of the best defensive players — perhaps one of the best players, period — in Notre Dame football history. Forever, and ever, Weis and his staff will merit credit for swaying Te’o away from USC and to South Bend. But there is no mistaking the progress the Heisman Trophy finalist made with Kelly’s staff, particularly defensive coordinator Bob Diaco, whom the Te’o camp considers indispensable to the progression from raw talent to the most decorated defensive player ever, postseason award-wise.
Bennett Jackson, CB:
A couple of nervous weeks passed between Weis’ firing and Kelly’s staff first getting in touch with Jackson, then a recruit out of New Jersey. Jackson hadn’t wavered, and his transformation from receiver and return man to reliable starting cornerback is one of the position-switch success stories of Kelly’s tenure. Nowhere was Notre Dame more vulnerable than in its secondary this year, until it wasn’t, thanks to Jackson’s steadiness in his first full season of action at the position.
Zeke Motta, S:
Brought in by Weis but brought along by Kelly — and, really, former Irish safety Harrison Smith, to whom Motta was a friend and also essentially an understudy for three years. In a beleaguered secondary, Motta was an extension of the coaching staff on the field, falling immediately in line with the plan.
Matthias Farley, S:
He could be a four-year mainstay in the Irish secondary … after arriving as a receiver. It’s another of Kelly’s calculated transformations, flipping a talent into an area of need and watching as that player thrives in place of an injured fifth-year veteran at safety. The lack of depth in the secondary was a problem shared by recruiting misses from both staffs shortly before and then after the transition. Finding a solution like Farley is to Kelly and Co.’s credit.