Saturday, September 7, 2013

NOTRE DAME'S BRIAN KELLY SEEKS OUTSIDE HELP TO IMPROVE HIS PROGRAM

How hard do you as a coach work to improve how you do your job?  We all work to help our players do their jobs better but are we determined enough and secure in what we want to achieve that we would go out and ask an outsider to take a look at what we do and critique it?  I came across this post on SI Wire and came away more impressed with Brian Kelly.  He obviously did an amazing job getting Notre Dame to the National Championship game last year when know one last September even had them on the radar.  He won several Coach of the Year awards.  But instead of resting on his accomplishments, he went out and asked Bill Belichick to please take a look at his program through a microscope.  The great ones are continual learners!  Here is part of the colum:

Shortly after Notre Dame’s lopsided loss to Alabama in the BCS championship game, coach Brian Kelly began brainstorming methods for reviewing his program’s strengths and weaknesses. Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports reports one of Kelly’s wishes came true: He talked three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Belichick into consulting on Notre Dame football.

Kelly and Belichick first met last February at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am in California. That’s when Kelly popped the question:
“I asked him if he could spend some time watching games and we could discuss,” Kelly told Yahoo! Sports.
Belichick was immediately intrigued at the prospect of studying Notre Dame’s program.
“I just really enjoy talking football,” Belichick said. “So much goes into the entire process that it’s impossible to run out of things to work on – coaching, playing, practice, preparation, scouting, technology, how the whole structure fits together.”
In March, the Patriots coach went to work breaking down game film with Notre Dame’s coaching staff, analyzing its schemes and dissecting the program’s deficiencies. Kelly said the most valuable time Belichick spent was coaching his coaches how to coach.

Read the entire column here.