Brian Kelly Ranked As College Football's 12th Best Head Coach

Pro Football Focus ranked Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly as the 12th best coach in college football

Pro Football Focus ranked Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly as the 12th best head coach in college football.

No, I did not make a mistake in typing that. PFF writer Seth Galina released a ranking of the 20 best head coaches in college football, and he ranked Kelly 12th.

Galina's introduction to the ranking made his placement of Kelly in the 12 spot even more puzzling. He wrote:

"These college football head coach rankings are a shoutout to the underdog and the unwanted, a chance to recognize those who might not be in the national spotlight but deserve their moment for clawing their programs up from the depths and steering it toward a new, compelling future.

"It’s always difficult to examine coaches through the prism of wins, losses and efficiency rankings. After all, coaches who win a seemingly endless number of games aren’t necessarily good, and those who lose games aren’t necessarily bad.

"The opportunity to win games was the biggest factor here. Flying above or below program expectations was the most important point when putting this list together." - Galina

Kelly inherited a program that had had won 10 or more games just twice in the previous 16 years prior to his arrival. In Kelly's 11 seasons in South Bend he has led the Irish to at least 10 wins in six seasons, including five in the last six seasons.

Kelly has led Notre Dame to the College Football Playoff in two of the last three seasons.

Yet Galina ranked him behind Kirby Smart (Georgia), Dan Mullen (Florida), Pat Fitzgerald (Northwestern), Matt Campbell (Iowa State), Kyle Whittingham (Utah) and Mack Brown (North Carolina).

I left a couple of coaches off the list. PFF also ranked Kansas head coach Lance Leipold (9th) ahead of Kelly. Galina ranked Coastal Carolina head coach Jamey Chadwell ranked ahead of Kelly as well.

Leipold did a tremendous job at Wisconsin-Whitewater, winning six national championships at that Division III program. He's an excellent coach, and he went 37-33 at Buffalo, including 24-10 in the last three seasons. 

He does not, however, have a coaching resume that comes anywhere close to what Kelly has done. Heck, take Kelly's Notre Dame resume off the table and Kelly still has a far better FBS resume than Leipold. Leipold is 37-33 in six seasons as a FBS coach, all at Buffalo, while Kelly went 53-22 in his first six seasons at the FBS level that included three seasons at Central Michigan and three seasons at Cincinnati.

Chadwell being ranked ahead of Kelly was nothing short of absurd. Yes, he did a great job leading the Chanticleers to an 11-1 record in 2020, but Chadwell has coached at CCU for three seasons, and the 2020 campaign was his first with a winning record. He has four years coaching at the FCS level (35-14) and he went 25-21 in four seasons at the Division II level.

Yet that coach, with a 79-52 career coaching record in 11 total seasons, is ranked ahead of the Notre Dame coach who has gone 102-39 in 11 seasons with the Irish.

Galina talks about what Leipold and Chadwell did at the lower levels, and that's fair. Chadwell went 60-35 in eight seasons at the D2 and FCS level, and he went 0-3 in the playoffs at those levels. Brian Kelly went 118-35-2 at the D2 level and won two national championships. 

Someone please explain this ranking to me. 

Don't even get me started on him ranking below Fitzgerald, Whittingham and Campbell.

Look, I'm about as tough of a critic of Kelly as you'll find, but my criticism has to do with where Kelly is in relation to winning a national championship, which has always been and always should be the standard at Notre Dame. But I have a very, very hard time justifying a ranking that has Kelly anywhere below a top five ranking. Notre Dame was a dumpster fire when Kelly arrived and now a decade later I'm ripping him for "only" going 11-2 during the 2019 season. 

Ranking Kelly as the 12th best coach in football, no matter what criteria you want to use, is beyond absurd and cannot be taken seriously.

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