So be upfront you Irish fans and followers. Was this what you expected? Does this even come close to what you hoped for? Have any of your heartfelt dreams been fulfilled?

The only honest answers to the above questions have to be definitely not, hell no and are you kidding?

Once again, another season of promise has been shot to bits. Disappointment reigns supreme and underachievement is the order of the day. And though it's still too early to make a definitive judgment on Brian Kelly, an undercurrent of doubt is beginning to surface as to whether the current Irish coach is suitably equipped to lead Notre Dame out of the wilderness of mediocrity.

As of now, Kelly looks like he's got too much Bob Davie, Ty Willingham and Charlie Weis in him and not nearly enough Ara Parseghian or Lou Holtz. Based upon his efforts to date, Kelly seems more of a nagging question than a resolute answer. Why is it that with some of missteps that Kelly's made in South Bend, one gets the feeling that the program has been down this same stretch of road before.

Again, it must be stressed that Kelly is deserving of more time and patience. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day and the way it's gone the last 15 years, it seems resurrecting Irish football is much more of a daunting task than constructing an historical city.

Previous coaching stints can never adequately prepare someone to seamlessly handle the many challenges unique to Notre Dame. A newcomer requires time to adapt and grow into the position. But Kelly's grace period is clearly over.

Yes, Kelly needed to change the flabby and soft culture that he inherited from his predecessor Weis but his imprint on the team should have been more pronounced by now. When required, ND is still unable to play a physical, consistent and snappy brand of ball and some of that deficiency must fall on the head coach.

Though no one expected him to be perfect, Kelly has endured more hiccups than most observers envisioned. The orchestrator of impressive turnarounds at Grand Valley, State Central Michigan and Cincinnati hasn't exactly been a gangbuster coach for the Irish. For every two steps forward, there's been one step back and three steps sideways.

Progress isn't coming at a breakneck or even a moderate pace. Rather, it's coming, if it's coming at all, with all the speed of a glacier. Sometimes slow and easy wins the race but it sure doesn't excite the fan base. It's a bitch having to wait and be patient when you're not even sure things are headed in the right direction.

There's no denying that since Kelly took the wheel, there have been some insufferable defeats, glaring coaching miscues, unnecessary controversies and a frustrating lack of consistency from his Irish squads.

The question that now hangs in the wind is whether the gaffes that Kelly has committed are black marks that are indicative of something more serious or if his errors are merely temporary blemishes that will eventually disappear? Or put another way, do Kelly's Irish just need to apply a few treatments of Clearasil to their complexion or do they require a complete face-lift?

The 2011 season was hardly a ringing endorsement for Kelly's coaching chops. Was it a disaster? Well, no one with any credibility could possibly make that claim. But it was a year highlighted by some major letdowns and inexcusable lapses.

It can be successfully argued that had Kelly been more on top of things and made more enlightened in-game decisions, Notre Dame could have cut their loss total at least in half and that might have gotten the Domers into the BCS discussion. As it is, the Irish are currently nothing more than second-class citizens with a rather ordinary resume.

It was Kelly and he alone that set in motion the one act that probably undermined Notre Dame's hopes for achieving something grand. When Kelly pulled the plug so ridiculously early on QB Dayne Crist and then stubbornly refused to revisit him when circumstances begged the coach to do so, he put the Irish behind the eight ball. Making Tommy Rees the man was, in retrospect, misguided if not downright dumb.

Stuck with a quarterback with no legs and not enough juice to accurately get the ball downfield, Kelly unnecessarily handicapped his offense. On so many levels, he actually hamstrung his own team. How could a supposed topflight coach do such a thing?

Now look, this isn't meant to infer that Rees is without merit. At times, he has shown himself to be tough, efficient and competent at managing the offense. But the bad Tommy can be a nightmare with his procession of turnovers and in truly big games, he simply disappears. Sorry but that just isn't acceptable, let alone good enough.

After eyeballing Rees for a full season, the verdict is in. Rees is all right to OK, but he offers little beyond that. That's fine for a backup but it doesn't cut it as a starter. Kelly's adamant refusal to sit Rees down when he struggled doomed the Irish to a year of what-ifs.

Guaranteed, if Crist had remained the starter or had been given the chance to reclaim the job that Kelly swiped from him, ND would have been demonstrably better off record-wise and on the field.

Now, after another Rees meltdown versus Stanford, the QB situation is again unsettled and in a state of flux. Hence, there's a strong possibility promising though green sophomore signal caller Andrew Hendrix might get the nod when the Irish go Bowling in late December against Florida State. What about Crist you might ask? Forget it. Kelly resigned him to the slag heap long ago.

Had Kelly shown just a little faith in Crist and backed him a bit, the Irish might have enjoyed an entirely different year. Certainly, no worse than the one they just concluded. The quarterback fiasco that developed was and is completely Kelly's doing. The whole debacle must be laid right at the coach's doorstep.

The uncertainty that exists at QB is by no means Kelly's only shortcoming.

Because he went crazy conservative and lacked the balls to take a risk on more of a playmaker type, ND's punt return game became a total joke, a weekly embarrassment and altogether useless. This was another area were Kelly clearly inhibited his team by diminishing its prospects for victory.

Kelly's errors go on. Though it probably wouldn't have affected the USC outcome, Kelly's refusal to use timeouts available to him rankled many and sent a bad message to both his players and those in the stands. With SC running to the extreme and chewing clock, it would have behooved the Irish to change the dynamic and stop the proceedings, in order to regroup and to gear up for a final stand and push.

Instead, Kelly sat on his hands and let the Trojans' momentum continue unchecked. Kelly's inaction opened up his team to being labeled quitters for doing nothing to preserve time and keep its flickering hopes alive.

But if you thought the timeout controversy was a poor reflection of the ND coach, well, what he set in motion in the aftermath of the SC game was a real head-scratcher.

Obviously frustrated by his team's uninspired effort and perhaps seeking to excuse his own failings, Kelly engaged in a tasteless case of class warfare. He surprised many with the pronouncement that while those players he had personally recruited were progressing on schedule, those carryovers that he had inherited hadn't grasped his concepts with equal aplomb. In essence, he was inferring that the upperclassmen were the drag holding the team down. This was a rambling without thought or its potential consequences.

The reaction was swift and severe. Older players were genuinely hurt and upset. No dummy, Kelly realized the stupidity of his remarks and quickly backtracked. After a team meeting was held to clear the air, the aggrieved parties decided to take the high road and forgive for the good of the team. A possible damaging fracture among the Irish had been averted. But this was a mother of a blunder by Kelly because he had created an unnecessary firestorm that threatened the team's morale.

Other Irish deficiencies have manifested themselves on Kelly's watch. Though the coach professes to be building a tougher and more robust brand of player, the Irish sure got physically manhandled in marquee games versus USC and Stanford.

And that leads to a larger question. Why is it that Kelly's Irish shrink from the challenge when the stakes are the highest and the lights are the brightest? Against Michigan they totally choked, the Trojans thoroughly whipped them and then Stanford beats them down. Can't a Kelly team ever rise to the occasion except on a rare occasion?

And forget about a semblance consistency. It's anyone's guess from week-to-week what sort of Domer team will show up. The fluctuating rhythms of ND's ability to execute and perform are quite disturbing.

While Kelly has earned solid reviews in areas like upgrading recruiting and not losing his teams when they got off to poor starts the last two years, it must be acknowledged that a lot more was expected of him by this stage. With an overall record of 16 and 9 and without a victory in four shots against Michigan and Stanford, Kelly isn't exactly setting the world on fire. At this rate, there won't be a statue erected in his honor anytime soon on the ND campus.

For Kelly to reclaim some of the faith and belief that many Irish fans had in him, he must ratchet-up the bottom line. A step in the right direction would be to have his charges primed and ready to be go-getters in the Champs Sports Bowl on Dec. 29th.

Next, Kelly would be well advised to make his third season a breakout campaign. Historically, every ND coach of note has made a forceful statement by year three. If it hasn't happened by then, it probably never will.

No one says that Kelly doesn't have his strengths. He certainly has his good points. And there's no disputing that he's got a track record. But as the last two years have demonstrated, the 50-year-old coach isn't without blemishes.

The question is are they the type of blemishes that will soon fade or will they stubbornly remain, destined to scar Kelly permanently?

For too long, the complexion of the Irish has been pock-marked. Let's see if Kelly has the wherewithal to clear it up.