Kelly recruited better than Dantonio did before him, very few people can really argue the point when talking of classes taken in their totality. But Kelly really sucked at recruiting defense, particularly defensive line players. He had a lot of success early on with the gifts he was given on the defensive line. His first roster was stacked on the defensive line, Angelo Craig, Anthony Hoke, Adam Hoppel, Terrill Byrd and Lemonte Nelms formed the core of that first unit. As those guys began to graduate he needed to find play makers on the D-Line so he flipped Connor Barwin from TE to DE, which worked out pretty well for all parties. But switching players became a case where Brian Kelly became infatuated with his own abilities. He believed that he could find defensive difference makers on his roster, so he for all intents and purposes stopped recruiting defensive linemen. In Kelly's last two classes he recruited a total of 14 DL prospects, just four in his last class, of which 7 remain on the D-Line and only 1, Jordan Stepp, is a part of the rotation currently. The remainder have either left the team, or moved over to the offensive line where they aren't providing much in the way of depth or help. That is a terrible attrition rate for a position group. Compounding the problem is the fact that most of Kelly's D-Line recruits were long term projects that need a few more years in the weight room before they can help out in a meaningful way. To sum up Kelly thought that the best way forward was to try to continue to make difference making defensive linemen like he did with Barwin instead of going out there are looking for them. As a result he reached on a lot of players who were borderline BCS recruits thinking he could coach and train them up to get them to perform at a high level. Needless to say that was an ill fated strategy, one that Jones has had to pick up the pieces of, with the predictably terrible results.
