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UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 21, 2017

Mike McGlinchey

South Bend, Indiana

Q. Mike, Coach talked about offensively being more complete this week. What do you need to do to have a more complete effort on the offensive side of the ball?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Well, I think it just starts with our preparation. I think it starts with going back to the basics of what we do and trusting our coaching and going to work each day at practice this week and cleaning up the little details that we need to clean up and continue to try and attack Stanford.

Q. How nice is it going to be to have more possessions than obviously what you had against Navy last week?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: It's certainly going to be very nice, especially now that it shouldn't be 40 degrees and pouring rain to just sit on the sidelines after 45 minutes of them having the football. But yeah, it'll be great. It'll be just a normal football game between Notre Dame and Stanford, and very excited about that.

Q. What are your thoughts about when you're flying out there, you're flying out there to win your 10th game. Last year you were flying to the West Coast and you were a four-win team. Now you have a chance to get to 10 wins and have so much more to play for than this time last season?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Well, that's huge for us. That's exactly where our program wants to be. It's where we've worked since January to get it to, and it's a great opportunity against a great Stanford team, and that's all we're focused on.

Q. How much confidence do you have this offense can get back to what you were like against Wake Forest three games ago?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Well, I think we have all the confidence in the world. We know that it starts from the top with Coach Long and his game plan and what he's been able to do for us this season. We have all the trust and faith in the world in him, and then it works down to us as the players. We know we're going to have a good game plan intact with our coaching staff, and it's just up to us to prepare hard each day in practice this week and then continue to clean up the details and execute to the best of our ability against Stanford.

Q. You have to go back to 2012 to find the last time Notre Dame beat a top-20 team on the road. Obviously not a huge sample size, but have you noticed any common denominators during his opportunities to win these games, and what needs to be fixed?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: I don't know if we necessarily have things that need to be fixed that much. Obviously a couple weeks ago took a big lump down in South Beach, but I don't think it's like a big kind of back to the drawing board like clean-house kind of deal. I think we just need to clean up a couple of small details that didn't allow us to play our best and continue to clean those up as the weeks go on. But we're very confident in our team's football ability and have a great opportunity to go win our 10th game against Stanford against a really, really good Stanford football team, and that's really -- I don't think we need to worry about fixing too much other than just cleaning up the things that we did wrong.

Q. And you mentioned obviously Stanford; this will be your fifth time around here. How do you assess this program, and really is this a rivalry or is this just another opponent in front of you?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: No, I think over my five years here, Stanford is kind of my favorite opponent to play. You know, it's one of those classic football games to me, especially because they're a program and a team that's had so much success over the last probably decade or so, and since I've been here, they've always been at the forefront of the nation in terms of college football programs. Getting the chance to play them and knowing the opponents over the last five years, I've seen some of the same defensive players over my entire three years here starting, and it's just pretty cool to be able to play in that, and they're a team that takes a lot of pride in what they do. They're very strong, they're very tough, and they're just as good as it gets in terms of programs, and they're going to line up, they're going to see if we can beat them, and there's no kind of fancy stuff behind it, it's just line up, play football, our technique versus theirs and let's see what happens.

Q. Your offensive line has been named a semifinalist for the Joe Moore award for the second time in three years. I wanted to ask you about the two young guys on the right side of the line, Hainsey and Kramer. Just your assessment of their play in contributing to that and what you think they might be like in the future.
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Well, I think to answer your question about the future, I think the sky is the limit for the two of them. They've done an awesome job all year starting back in January and then throughout spring ball to get to where they are right now. The two of them, as much as you want to talk about me and Q and Sam and Alex and the veterans on our offensive line, those two have been just as good as all of us, and that's been so cool to see.

They've just battled each and every week, and nothing fazes the two of them. They're the new guy on the offensive line, and it's hard enough with the preparation each and every day and how demanding Coach Hiestand is to the two of them, and week in and week out just keep on bringing it and bringing it on teams -- we haven't had an easy schedule to play some defensive lines we've had this year. Week three in the two of them's third game of the year, they both played against Harold Landry, and they got him the entire time of the game, and he was pretty much a non-factor in that one. We played North Carolina State defensive line who is about as good as it gets in the country, USC, Michigan State, all those teams that we've had a lot of success against, and the two of them are an integral part of that, and on top of the way that they've played, they're just about as good a kids as you can find in the country, and very, very lucky to have spent my last two years with Tommy and my last year with Rob. They're as good as it gets.

Q. I know when Brian about a year ago, a little bit more than a year ago, sat down with you guys, had exit interviews, asked you what you thought about the program, he wanted to come up with something that wasn't just about 2017; he wanted a sustainable model. As you look at this team and this program, what would give you the impression that what you guys did this year is sustainable beyond this year?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Well, I think it was just the foundation of who we are. I think we've set a culture here starting back when the changes became a little tangible and you could see what was going on here that something changed, and it's something that changed for the long haul. We knew where we were last year. We knew the kind of tough times that came with that and the hard -- it's hard on everybody starting with the head coach all the way down to the players. We made a decision that we don't want to be there again, and it's our job as players and as coaches here to uphold the standards that this place has, and it's one of -- we talk about it all the time, the standard of excellence that Notre Dame comes with. It's a culture. It's the coaches that are in place. It's the guys that are constantly being brought in to play here, and that's what's going to continue to happen here as we continue to go forward. We talk about the goal of winning a National Championship and graduating all our players, and that's the only goal that this place will have for as long as Coach Kelly is still here, and it's the only goal that any program should have.

I think I touched on this a little bit last week, but whether it's now or whether it's in the future, all of us are still building to attain that goal, and I think that the people in place, the culture that's in place that comes along with those people that are in place, I think it's going to be a pretty easy mixture of continued success here for the future.

Q. I'm curious with Coach Kelly's status being such a big deal in the off-season and early part of this season if you ever got the sense of what makes the Notre Dame job maybe more difficult or just what maybe the difficult parts of the job are. Can you tell that as a player?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: You certainly can because it kind of trickles down to the players just as much. You know, when times are good, it's an all-time high here at Notre Dame. Everybody is on the bandwagon. And when times are bad, there's a lot of people that are very, very quick to jump off of it. Notre Dame is as national of a program as you can kind of find in college football, and it's got that kind of a fan base, and there's a lot of people that are very, very passionate about this place, as they should be because it is so great.

But it's a tough job to be the head coach at Notre Dame. There's so many other things that go along with it that are so far past football that none of us will really ever understand, and Coach Kelly took obviously all of us had a bad year last year, and I don't think there's more of an example of how to fix a problem or how to truly kind of be a man about things than look in the mirror and change what was wrong with himself first and then how to infiltrate that correction to his entire football team, and that's what he's done. There's so much scrutiny that comes along with playing and coaching at this place that it makes the job that much harder, but he's never let that affect him. He doesn't care. I mean, none of us care about what people are saying on Twitter, what people are saying all across the media in the United States. It's all about results and winning football games, and that's what we're going to continue to try to do and put our best foot forward for the guys that are in this program that truly mean the world to us, and that's all you can do.

Q. I also want to ask you about some of the other offensive linemen, Liam in particular. Certainly he'll have a shot at left tackle next year. What do you like about his game and how have you seen him grow on Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Well, Liam has done a great job. He's been my partner in practice pretty much for the last year or two, and he's a great person. What I love about his game, he's just a nasty dude. He likes to get down with playing offensive line the right way. He's an old-fashioned kind of guy, really good teammate, and I think the sky's the limit for him, too. He's got a lot of ability. He's a big kid, 6'6", 305 pounds, and he gets it. He wants to be good. And that's what's going to -- if he can continue to build on that desire and the want to be good and funnel it into, all right, working smart now and how to figure out clean-up technique, become a student of the game and continue to master our concepts on offense, I think the sky's the limit for him, as well.

Coach Hiestand kind of gets his hand picking of who he wants to bring in to Notre Dame to play offensive line, and he's seen that with Liam, and I see it, as well. He's made such great improvements from just the start of camp to where he is now. He's willing to take coaching from me, from coach Hiestand and has been able to eliminate a lot of distractions that were freshman mistakes that he had, and he's going to continue to get better with that, and the more he understands the game of football, the more he dedicates time to the weight room and his technique, I don't think there's going to be many people that are better than him.

Q. Is it fair to say the biggest jump from when he showed up to when training camp started the biggest jump has been physical, but since then has it been tactical or technique?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: I think it's been a little bit of everything. I think that's just part of -- he's kind of got the same issues that I had when I was a young kid. You know, he has a lot of ability. You can see it in spurts in practice and in the way that he prepares and his desire to want to be good and the way that he works and the attack that he has every single day. But yeah, it's a little bit of everything. He's just got to continue to master his technique, master the concepts of our offense and make sure that he's always on his task because that's a part of being a great offensive lineman is never being the guy that lets your team down, and as soon as Liam -- and he's continued to improve on that each and every day, and he's going to continue to improve on that, and it's going to be a big off-season for Liam Eichenberg.

Q. I also wanted to ask you about your offensive line, you were high on them in August when not a lot of people were. How has that group impressed you, surprised you, maybe backed up what you thought all along from where they were in August to where they are today going into game 12?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Well, I think they kind of did back up what I was saying about them all along. I'm a guy that has 100 percent faith and trust in his teammates, and those guys brought it every single day from January on, and it wasn't anything that they did that was -- it wasn't brain surgery, they just went to work and trusted their coaching with Elston and Elko, and you can't be prouder of that group. The amount of scrutiny that they took was just on par with anybody else on our football team, and they stepped up in a big way, guys like Jay Hayes, Khalid Kareem, Daelin Hayes, and obviously Jerry Tillery is as good of a football player as it gets inside on the defensive line, too. Those guys, you just feel them more and more each and every day at practice, like the pop that they bring with their pads, the confidence that they're going around playing with and the system they've got now, it allows them to play free and it allows them to be the athletes that they are. It's been great to see with them. They're very young still on that side of the ball, and they're just going to continue to get better, as well.

Q. You mentioned Khalid. Has he made maybe the biggest move from that group from maybe where he was in January, because the other guys you mentioned I think people expected there was some potential there. Khalid was a little bit more of a question mark when the season started?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Yeah, I would say so. I think he's answered the bell a lot with giving us some valuable, valuable plays and valuable minutes. Just continued to produce for us. He's one of the few guys that have accomplished getting a game ball this season. He's stepped up in huge ways, and he's a tough guy to block a lot of times during practice for me, as well. He's a long-armed, hard-nosed kid and he's slippery, and he's done a good job to improve that each and every week, and he's just getting better and better, as well.

Q. You mentioned Stanford being maybe your favorite game to play, and you guys only play close games against Stanford. I'm wondering when you go into a Stanford game, what do you know that you're going to expect from that game?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Well, you know you're going to get a team that prides themselves on being the best at what they do. I'm speaking specifically on the defensive side of the football for them because they're a team that's always been well-coached. The defensive line and their linebackers are always seeming to be right on task with where they're supposed to be, and you kind of line up and expect it to just be a technique-on-technique, effort-on-effort game, and that's the fun part about it.

I've known them for the last three years of playing but five years of watching them play, and they haven't really changed, other than just shuffling new players in and out. I feel like having that kind of a game and having that kind of a knowledge of your opponent just makes it a lot more fun because they feel the same way about us. We're going to line up, we're going to see whose technique is better, we're going to see who can play a little bit harder, a little bit tougher, and normally the toughest line on the field wins the game, and that's what we're going to try and do. It's just one of those old-fashioned line up and play football games. There's not going to be much to trick around with or much differences. Obviously they'll have wrinkles for us here and there, but it's just one of those things that they take a lot of pride in what they do, we take a lot of pride in what we do, and we'll see what happens.

Q. There's moments in the course of a season that hit you and you remember them. After the Georgia game when you were in the postgame press conference you were adamant about the responsibilities that you had. We missed blocks, we fumbled the ball, we dropped passes and we committed some penalties. That wasn't on Coach Kelly, that was on us, and you guys seemed to really take ownership of the team at that point, and then it showed, Boston College, Michigan State. You're a team that wasn't necessarily going to wait for somebody to get you fired up or whatever, we know what we've got to do, and the ownership was pretty clear.
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Yeah, I kind of agree with you. What was the question?

Q. I'm just saying, seemed like a key point of the season that you guys took ownership of the team. In addition to the great coaching that you had, you also said we're responsible for this.
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Yeah, I think that's who we wanted to be as a football team, and that's what the difference was from us -- from last year to this year. It was something that me as a leader of this football team, I obviously had one of the biggest mistakes in that Georgia game and I'm trying to forget about it as best as possible, but got to keep talking about it. We just didn't want -- we didn't want things to get out of hand. We knew what we were capable of. We knew that we had made mistakes against Georgia that probably shouldn't have happened, and if we don't make those mistakes, we win the game. It starts with me as a two-time captain and a leader of this football team, and how do I help that mindset for the rest of the football team, and that's something that high-character, high-quality guys in our locker room all responded to, and it's just about being a man and taking responsibility and doing what's necessary to get your job done. That's all we've been preaching since we got back here in January last year, and it was very cool to see that come to fruition after Georgia for sure.

Q. You seem like a guy that's really into the legacy of what Notre Dame football is about. 130 years there have been those teams that have changed the culture and really got it on a sustainable level of excellence. You guys got to be really proud of the fact that you've done that this year and you've got the program where you need it to be and you've done that with that hard work?
MIKE McGLINCHEY: Yeah, it's a great opportunity for us. We have an opportunity to win this week, to win a 10th game for the second time in three years, and that's a big feat for the program, and it's something that we really strive for. We want to be as premier as it gets in the country with being the best, and only going to continue to grow on that as the weeks and years go on at this place. But yes, it's absolutely the players' job to bring this place back to where it's supposed to be. The more people understand the greatness of this place and the quality and how lucky we are to be able to play football here, I think the more success will come because it's just another factor of why you want to put it all out on the line.

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