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UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 21, 2015

Brian Kelly

South Bend, Indiana

Notre Dame - 19, Boston College - 16

BRIAN KELLY: Well, we're excited about the win, obviously. To get to 10 wins for our club was a very important number for us. But more importantly, gets us closer to, you know, the goals we've had all year. You know what I love about this team is they persevere. It's been injuries all year. Tonight it was turnovers. Just found a way to win against a very spirited Boston College team despite the amount of turnovers that we had tonight.

Again, would we have planned to turn it over this many times? I thought we could have won, probably not, but our kids made a couple plays they needed to late to find a way to win. I'm sure there are a couple of questions out there, so we'll open it up to you guys and gallons.

Q. Talk about the injuries tonight.
BRIAN KELLY: Looks like a high ankle sprain on CJ and a stress fracture for KeiVarae.

Q. (No microphone.)
BRIAN KELLY: I'm not sure yet. We're still having conversations about that.

Q. Do you know if it's his right or left?
BRIAN KELLY: It's right or left.

Q. Your perspective on the 80-yard run?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, I don't have a perspective, I have an assignment error. It's crazy. I mean, it's absolutely crazy. There's one guy in there that is assigned to him, and we just -- we have a tendency to lose our focus on detailed items like that, the quarterback that runs, that came in the game that we have somebody on.

Q. Were you expecting (inaudible) to play tonight?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, we did, absolutely. Yeah, we expected zone read and him to be part of the offense.

Q. Talk about the perseverance of DeShone, how he responded coming out in the second half.
BRIAN KELLY: You know, I think that quarterbacks can at times be -- they can go one of two ways, right; they can become a bit shell-shocked and withdrawn in a sense. He was not fazed at all. He stayed aggressive and stayed in the moment. I thought he played much better in the second half.

But he is going to learn so much and take so much from today's game that you sometimes can't practice. Better decision making, and the great thing about it is he's so committed and cares so much about wanting to be a better quarterback -- it's a hard job playing quarterback at this level, and he learned a lot today. He was humbled a little bit today, and I think it's going to be really good for him. He's going to take this and really build on it.

Q. What were the challenges of having both teams on the sidelines?
BRIAN KELLY: The challenges are when they're all the way down the other end in terms of your communication and getting your guys in and out of the game. That's a challenge. You know, they're 10 yards away from you, you know, there's a little bit of making sure that your signals are not compromised.

I thought the officiating crew did a great job of managing and making allowances to get people in and out of the game without it being disruptive. I thought from my standpoint, I did not think it had anything to do with the game itself. It made it a little bit harder on our end, but it didn't affect anything in the game itself.

Q. There were so many traps in this game. Did that play a role?
BRIAN KELLY: No, I don't think that the sideline situation had anything to do with the game itself other than you have to spend time preparing for it and managing your game. I mean, we literally had to make up some dividers and you saw the curtains that we made, and we had to be extremely aware of the time on the clock, when we're sending people in. We couldn't late substitute. We couldn't get away with things like that. I was thinking about getting that sideline to us in the fourth quarter, things like that. It's kind of like ice hockey; you want that shift down on your side of the ice in a sense. But other than that, I don't think it affected the game.

Q. To get into the playoffs, how important is it that you win as well as how you win?
BRIAN KELLY: The committee is out of my hands. It's out of our players' hands. All we want to do is put ourselves in a position to be considered. We feel like we need to win another game to still be considered. We're one of the top four teams after last week. We'll see where we stand this week. We've just got to keep winning games. We've got another game against a nationally-ranked team which will give us an opportunity.

Our guys know what has been in front of them when they lost to Clemson early in the year. You've got to win all your games. Got one more, got to win it.

Q. At first glance from where you were on the sideline, what was going on with the turnovers?
BRIAN KELLY: I thought Boston College did a great job of ripping it loose. Great job on CJ Prosise. They ripped that one loose. And I really couldn't tell on Josh Adams's fumble. It looked like one he should have secured. That was the second one.

The interception was careless. I mean, we tried to force on 1st down, you know, a little boot pass into a corner that's sinking in the back of the end zone. That's crazy; throw that thing away. It's 2nd and 10. And then the fourth one, they were in zone, we threw a little screen pass, ill-advised, you know, again. Worst thing down there, let's kick the football. Learned a lot from it, and I think we'll be better because of it.

Q. What concerns did you have about the collateral damage that those red zone turnovers would cause for your team as you tried to overcome them?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, it's like anything else. I've been trying to prepare for this moment. It's like leaving runners in scoring position (laughter). Pretty good?

You can't go down there and not come away with points, especially -- that's a really good defense, and for us to come up empty every single time, you know, we saw that almost sort of against Temple, too. You've got to score points when you're down there. We're moving the ball fairly effectively most of the night, and just to keep stubbing our toe down there becomes concerning, obviously, and it made it a lot closer in my perspective.

Q. Just to follow up, as these opportunities kept mounting, were you concerned at all about how this was playing not just in front of everybody --
BRIAN KELLY: I mean, honestly I thought we had game control. I felt pretty good. I thought our defense had pretty good control. Obviously they had one that last drive that we let the quarterback out a couple of times, which was disappointing, but I felt like we had pretty good control of the game.

Q. Was there a point tonight where just, given your local ties, you just took a moment to appreciate where you were playing this game?
BRIAN KELLY: I did when I came out. I came out a little bit earlier than I normally do. I came out like 15 minutes early and just looked around, and I thought the Fenway Park people and Sam Kennedy did a terrific job of transforming the park into a football stadium. It really felt like a football stadium. It didn't feel like you were squeezed in, you were shorted anywhere, other than the sideline situation, which I said we could manage. It just felt like a great venue.

Q. Should they play more football games here?
BRIAN KELLY: I think they should, yeah.

Q. Were you pleasantly surprised?
BRIAN KELLY: I was very surprised how well the track played. The footing was excellent. It was a fast field. Yeah, I was very, very pleased with the track itself.

Q. (Question on Brown and Carlisle.)
BRIAN KELLY: Well, I thought they both played very well. They were singled out in my locker room postgame talk about the team. I thought our two seniors really stepped up big for us; Chris Brown and Amir Carlisle had big games for us. They played a lot of cover-two tonight. That's not something that they do. They played double zone outside on Will. It frees up your inside players, and then Chris got a couple one-on-one opportunities on the outside, and DeShone was able to find him.

I think each and every week those guys are factors. It's just we're going to look to Will if we can, and if he's in a situation where we can't get him the ball, those two guys are really good players, as well.

Q. Your team has almost always played really well in the Shamrock Series games. When your team has lacked the focus, I don't know if there's a better way to say it, like it did tonight, did they maybe get caught up in the atmosphere?
BRIAN KELLY: You know, I mean, again, if we just look at the way -- offensively I thought we were moving the ball effectively against a really good defense, and it's just the turnovers that are unexpected that these guys are so conscious of it, and it's just one of those things that you really can't put your finger on because they haven't been sloppy and they haven't been mistake-prone all year, and then tonight they throw up a game like this, I just never felt during the week that they weren't locked in and they weren't prepared to play, and I think they were prepared to play. I think Boston College needs to get a little credit for ripping the ball loose, and then we need to understand that we've got to be smarter with the football down in the red zone.

Q. After the last two weeks did you think that you had solved many of your red zone issues?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I think, again, we felt we were pretty good down there and then we turned the football over. We just have to clean that up, and the kids will.

Q. You mentioned Amir, Chris Brown. Sort of like a steady senior influence tonight? So much is on DeShone.
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, we kind of looked to those guys, and I know DeShone was looking towards getting to those guys. Early in the game we ran a corner route to AlizÃ© Jones, and AlizÃ© kind of flattened the route off a little bit and we missed him, and I said, look, look for your match-ups, but when it really gets to that time you've got to go to your veterans if they've got the same kind of match-up, so he started to look towards his veterans when he needed those one-on-one match-ups.

Q. Do you feel like Kizer needed a game like this for his long-term growth?
BRIAN KELLY: I mean, I wish he didn't have any of the turnovers, right? Here's what I would tell you: Some may never benefit from a game like this. This will do great things for him, and he will benefit greatly from it.

Q. You talked about being out of character tonight. To what degree does that concern you that they were so out of character?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, out of character in the sense that they were prepared, they played hard, they were locked in. They turned the football over. I mean, the story to the game here is if we take care of the football, this game separates. As well as Boston College intended to play and did play, you know, we turned the ball over four times in easy scoring areas of the field. So those are things that are correctable, and we'll get them corrected. Tonight was not a good night of taking care of the football, and we got away with it because the kids persevered.

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