Walton, Duff, Earl, and Sapp. Walton obviously was an All-American, Duff was a great athlete, and the safeties were both ball hawks and great athletes.

In 2003, we lost Walton and Sapp and replaced them with with Preston Jackson and Quentin Burrell. Then the next year we replaced Earl and Duff with Dwight Ellick and a young Tom Zbikowski. Willingham also hired a clueless DB coach for 2004.

Combined with slow linebackers, it's clear why things fell apart.

We were atrocious in coverage. But what kind of DB talent did he have? In 2001 it was Ellick and Burrell. In 2002 it was Richardson; in 2003 it was Hedgemon, Zibby, Parrish, and Wooden. In 2004 it was Lambert and ?

I'm sure I forgot some guys, but that's not a lot to work with. Then throw in some slow Sam LBs (Curry), and I'm not sure how you're supposed to do anything.

Baer didn't help himself through recruiting, and he deserves blame for that, but I honestly don't think he's that horrible.

window-dressing. They would sell out to stop the run, for appearances sake. Rush defense was generally pretty good, but the overall defense was completely ineffective.

have been more devastating in Kelly's offense that first year. Senior Jimmy Clausen could have completed over 80% in that offense.

Obviously, run defense is as big a part of this metric as rush offense, but Willingham had very good rush defenses (especially in 2002 and 2004), which means the offense didn't have to be very good to put up those numbers.

I think I'd me more impressed with a Holtz team running for 4.0 ypc when everyone was expecting four yards and a cloud of dust (or at least the option) than a true spread offense running for 4.5 ypc. Of course, Kelly hasn't come close to running a true spread offense yet at ND.

Weis inherited less overall talent than Kelly did, but Kelly inherited a more sissified team (and no QB with two years of experience).

The team that Weis inherited was sub-standard, but not the complete mess that he left for Kelly.

2002: +0.60
2003: +0.86
2004: +0.67

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Probably not as dramatic a difference as 2009 without them, but it sure is fun to imagine Tate in the spread

...but imagine what our record might have been in 2009 if we hadn't had one of the most prolific and efficent QBs in the country and a Biletnikoff-winning receiver. Not much of a stretch to say that we would have gone about 3-9 again.

Those Weis numbers are staggering. He really did build his last two teams around a QB and two WRs, and two of the three were gone when Kelly arrived.

As you said, there's a lot of room for improvement too. Great teams are over 5.0 on offense and below 3.0 on defense.

As I've said a number of times, I think the biggest challenge that Kelly's faced since he arrived is rebuilding the program from a strength & conditioning, physicality and mental perspective. I believe that the program that Weis left for Kelly was one of the softest in all of Notre Dame history and that the biggest factor in the performance of Kelly's teams since he arrived is the rebuilding that needed to occur in this area.

I think a good measure of a program's physicality and toughness is the ability to run the ball on offense and to stop the run on defense. The table below shows our performance during the Weis and Kelly eras on a yards per carry basis, both for ND and our opponents and on a 'net' basis.

             2005   2006   2007   2008   2009   2010   2011

YPC For      3.59   3.86   2.06   3.27   3.84   3.98   4.82

YPC Against  3.94   3.80   4.28   4.06   4.75   3.97   3.78

Net YPC     -0.35   0.06  -2.21  -0.79  -0.91   0.01   1.04

You'll note that Weis teams had a negative 'net' yards per carry differential, giving up more yards per carry than they gained in four of the five years. Kelly's been successful in rebuilding this 'net', putting us in positive territory (barely) in his first year and well above it in his second.

To put some historical perspective on this, prior to Weis, there had been only three years in the "post-Devine" period where ND has had a negative 'net' yards per carry differential:

-- Gerry Faust's 1984 7-6 season: -0.52
-- Lou Holtz's 1994 6-5-1 season: -0.17
-- Bob Davie's 1997 7-5 season: -0.35

Kelly still has more work to do here. Holtz's 1988 National Championship team had a 'net' of +1.72 and his 1989 team had a net of +2.08.

I'll state further that I think a "mentally tough" team has to be built on top of a "physically tough" team. From what I've seen over the last two years, I think we're now past the physical development part of the rebuilding job and a good way through the mental part. My expectation from here is to see Kelly start producing the same sort of results we saw at Cincinnati in Years 1 - 3, as I think he inherited a very physical team from Dantonio. He inherited a powder puff team from Charlie Weis.