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UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 15, 2018

Brian Kelly

South Bend, Indiana

Q. How did practice go today?
BRIAN KELLY: It was a good practice. Good energy. It was a little cooler out there, so guys recognized that right away. We're striving for consistency in performance now as you get into the middle of your preparation, so you want to see some things that start to repeat themselves. Some good things on both sides of the ball are beginning to kind of show themselves as repetitive in nature and reflect the kind of things that we're looking for to be a successful team.

Q. What stood out to you today?
BRIAN KELLY: I think the play making ability on offense. There's a number of different guys that have weapons that we can count on from an offensive standpoint, and I think defensively we're playing very well at the edge of our defense, cornerback, safety position is very active and you can see that. You can just see it during the practice and 7-on-7 and the one-on-ones that we've got guys competing for the football.

Feel really good about the ability to do some things defensively that sometimes you worry about, putting a guy out on an island. We're going to have to do that sometimes, and I think we can hold up.

Q. Kevin Austin, curious your expectations for him, your impressions of him so far, and your hopes for him for this season.
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, well, one thing that he brings that's kind of unique to our entire football team is his ability to handle a lot of volume during practice. I mean, he's a finely conditioned athlete in the sense that he comes back the next day, recovers extremely well, knows how to take care of his body. He's a lot more mature in the sense that he has the knowledge of what it takes to come out every day at a high level, and that's just a maturity that he's been obviously somebody in high school that has trained that way. So he's unique in that sense.

When we see a freshman that can handle the volume, we're just going to push him in there. He doesn't know 50 percent of the playbook, but he's got that volume and that skill set, as you can all see, and I'm sure that that's why you're asking the question. He's a guy that can help us this year.

Q. With both Brandon and Ian, how do you feel like those guys handle the growing pains this part of practice, and are they kind of where you'd hope them to be at this stage of preseason camp?
BRIAN KELLY: Oh, yeah, we're way ahead of where we were last year with both quarterbacks, certainly just by experience alone. We came into this, we were having this same meeting, right, and your No. 1 and No. 2 quarterback hadn't played. That's a different feeling for a head coach than coming in here and they've won football games and they've had success, they've been in the mix. Obviously we're way ahead of where we were last year, and now you guys weren't there at the end, but we're spending most of the time at the end of practice working on situational football, and that's where we've got to be learning at the quarterback position is the situational football, and that was different. We couldn't do that last year.

Q. We would have loved to have been there.
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I don't know what Bertsch was thinking. I told him to keep you there. He's been really tough this year.

Q. Isaiah Robertson --
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, we moved him over to offense. We just feel like there's a logjam at the position which he was at, and he's a really good athlete. He played wide receiver in high school. He's got some skills. He showed that today. He doesn't know what he's doing offensively, but in the blue zone showed soft hands, went up and caught the football with dexterity, didn't feel like it was clumsy to him. It was natural. He's a guy that we'll continue to progress on the offensive side.

Q. What is the timetable for Robert Hainsey coming back?
BRIAN KELLY: Tuesday. We wanted a full seven to eight days, somewhere in that range, so we didn't risk inflaming the tendon again. We're on that timetable. He's weight training, conditioning. He wants to get off the med squad in the worst way. He said it's harder than practicing. Yeah, but we're shutting him down until we know that we've gone through that window where we don't re-aggravate the tendon.

Q. In his wake, Josh Lugg gets more reps, he gets more -- how has he looked in camp?
BRIAN KELLY: He's done a good job, and Trevor has, too. Those are guys that we're going to naturally have to plug into those spots right around now and camp anyways.

Same thing with the quarterback situation; this is where ones and twos have to be split. Arms start to get tired. Tendonitis can kind of creep up, and you want to start splitting reps and maintaining the continuity, but you've got to give these guys the opportunity to recover, too.

Q. We see Boykin and Claypool obviously out there. Where his Chris Finke improved? Seems to have had a very good camp.
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, his power and strength, his ability to get in and out of his cuts, much more explosive, can handle himself on the perimeter by sticking his foot in the ground now and having some explosiveness that maybe he lacked last year. So that's all on Chris. His ability to do those things is a direct correlation to how hard he's worked to get to this point.

Q. You gave Tyler Newsome a big ol' hug in the middle of practice today. What provoked that?
BRIAN KELLY: I'm a hugger. You guys know that.

No, I mean, we've been working on some things relative to consistency in practice. He's such a great kid, and the point to him was that I want tough gentlemen. I want gentlemen off the field, but on the field, when it's time, I need you to be tough-minded, I need you in there and be consistent. He's got such a great leg. He sometimes overthinks the process a little bit. And I just wanted him to go in there, be aggressive, start kicking more consistently. He had back-to-back kicks with 4.5 hang time, so that was the big hug.

Q. Coach Polian, he runs around, has a lot of energy out there for you. What does he bring to the team and practices for you on a daily basis?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, I think first and foremost, just an attention to detail, and focusing strictly on special teams allows him to see all the little things that go into having a successful unit. His energy is really focused at one thing; he's not coaching another position. Being a head coach, he has a great attention to all of those things, not that you wouldn't if you were just a special teams coach that hadn't been a head coach, but it lends itself to be important in special teams because there's so many details that have to be followed.

Q. Will Coach Polian have a voice by the end of the season?
BRIAN KELLY: No, he will not. I mean, he just continues to go -- he's even louder in the meetings. It's kind of difficult sometimes.

Q. You also mentioned, I think, Jordan Genmark Heath previously, guys that can take a lot of volume. Tranquill, Coney, of course those are guys that can do the same, but any other younger guys that maybe it's not as obvious watching that they have that high-volume ability?
BRIAN KELLY: The guy that's gotten a lot of reps that can come back the next day is Patterson, the offensive lineman. He can do that. He doesn't seem to have a problem recovering. I would probably say from a defensive backfield, TaRiq Bracy is probably the top guy from a defensive perspective skill. He can go all day. He's really been impressive in some of the special teams tackling that we've done.

I'd say those guys probably stand out the most. And then another guy that -- and we mentioned him already, that's a freshman, is Jafar is in a different category, Jafar Armstrong. That guy is -- I haven't seen a guy like him in terms of the volume that he carries, and he doesn't break down at all.

Q. We saw Flemister take a couple live carries today and we hadn't really seen him. What do you see from him?
BRIAN KELLY: It's too early to tell really. We're trying to just get all those guys a little bit of work because it's a long season, and we know even last year at times, a guy that was unheralded was top three in rushing for us, and he didn't play much in preseason camp. It's important to get these guys some live work. We wanted him to get hit more than anything else, to see these young guys and how they handle contact. So C'Bo, Jamir has had a little bit of a hamstring, he's coming back from that. We've got to keep force feeding those guys and keep getting the reps to see who's that next guy that can go in there and help us.

Q. C'Bo, just body part, what was the injury; do you know?
BRIAN KELLY: C'Bo had a head injury.

Q. Daelin Hayes didn't seem to get live contact today --
BRIAN KELLY: Patellar tendonitis. He's a little sore. Nothing major. We don't have anything that's major other than camp stuff. Might have a tendonitis here or a twist or -- but nothing that's keeping anybody out of long-term competition.

Q. You worked quite a bit on kick return today or gave a bunch of guys an opportunity back there. With the new rule with the kickoff, you have to form a new philosophy as to how you're going to deal with those; what is yours?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, first of all, you'd better have somebody back there that has the capability to fair catch, right, and is not somebody that is not confident with his ball skills. You know, you're going to have some different philosophies there, and we'll see how it goes, but if you can get 4.1, 4.0 on hang time between the 2 and the 6-yard line with a real good unit going down there, you put some pressure on the kickoff return team to make a decision. If they try to bring it out with just a hang time scenario, you can pit them inside the 20-yard line quite easily, or if you feel like that's a dynamic group, maybe you're just going to punch it out of the back of the end zone. I think it would change from week to week on who we're playing, but the rule for us is one with John; John has got the ability to hang that thing around the 4-yard line and really force you to make a decision.

Q. What about your return man? Is it going to be like, hey, if it's inside the 5 but not in the goal line we want a fair catch, inside the 10?
BRIAN KELLY: Oh, in terms of returning it? Yeah, so I think what we're working on right now is to find who that guy is that can fair catch it and take it and be effective, then we'll make the decision relative to how we handle it internally.

Q. Bo Bauer, I'm not sure I saw him.
BRIAN KELLY: He was out there, unless something happened that I wasn't aware of. He was full go.

Q. What have you seen since the spring with Brandon and Ian, and what improvements have you seen, and what have you seen the last couple of practices from your offense that you like as it's coming together?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, Brandon and Ian, as I mentioned to Eric, you're just getting a more mature player that is confident in their ability. So both of them are extremely confident. Like there's no thought process of Ian is with the ones. Everybody is quite confident in his ability to run our first team. So that's no longer in effect. If you asked me last year at this time if Ian went in there with the ones, there might be some hesitation as to can he lead us. That obviously is huge for us.

As it relates to Brandon, it's just consistency with accuracy. He's made progress there. He's not where he wants to be, but he's made significant progress even from the spring, and that's better than what we saw during the year.

Incremental progress, I think we're all striving for better, but again, I think we've made the progress necessary.

Offensively I think it's dispersion of the football to a number of different weapons, Boykin, Claypool, Finke, Jafar Armstrong, Avery Davis. We've got three tight ends, four tight ends that can catch the football, a lot of weapons there, Tony Jones. I could go on and on. We've got some pretty good depth in guys that can help this football team.

Q. With your confidence in Ian Book, does that change what you can do with Brandon as a runner? He had like 140 carries last year anyway, but does it give you a little bit more confidence --
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah.

Q. -- that you can put him in situations?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I think so. I think when you go into your game plan, you always think about how many carries do you want to average per game. I don't think we'll go into that thinking -- BC ran for obviously over 200 yards given the circumstances of what was going on, right; I think we're less concerned about carries with him and more interested in highlighting his strengths and being productive with him.

Q. On the sort of work volume aspect, how has Avery Davis held up?
BRIAN KELLY: This is a process for him. So the transition has been real for him from the quarterback position to running back, wide receiver, a little bit of everything. And what Avery is doing, it's a mindset now that his recovery is much more important in some instances because we know what he can do as a football player. So his ability to recover and taking that serious, I don't know that he ever took that serious in his life. I'm a quarterback, throw the ball around and then we'll go run. This is different for him. So the recovery piece is so crucial now and his ability to continue this transition.

Q. We spent a lot of time asking about up-and-coming players, but I was curious with Tranquill and Coney in the middle, where you've seen them sort of turn the dial up a little bit, and then also just from a leadership, whether it be vocal, by example, what you've seen from them?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, Te'von is not very vocal. We all know that. But I'm really pleased with his consistency in doing the little things right all the time. His swat team came in last place this week, and they were required to check in at 6:45 every morning, and he's been the first one here making sure they check in. Just those little things of accountability. I think that that's so important.

Drue Tranquill, I just -- he presents himself in all aspects of our program from a leadership standpoint, both on and off the field. And because he does it right all the time, we've got a lot of guys following him.

As football players, Te'von continues to work on his pass coverage, the little nuances of that, and he's getting better there. And Drue on his run fits, those are the two things.

Q. It's clear the players are seeing results and have an affinity for Matt Balis. Given what happened at Maryland, how do you continue to push the limits in strength and conditioning without going too far?
BRIAN KELLY: I think it's pretty much what I've talked about before. I think the head coach and the strength coach are extremely important in developing a strong relationship on what you want accomplished. Everybody is interested in bigger, faster, stronger; how do you get there? I still think you get there by being demanding but never demeaning. I think that's the line that's out there.

Our players want -- when they come over from a day in the classroom, they want to come over here and get after it, if you will, and get after it in a positive environment where they're pushed every single day, and there's a demand on them to get bigger, faster, stronger, but never an environment that's demeaning. I think that's the line that all good coaches look to lay out.

Q. When something tragic like that happens, do you circle back with your own coaches and make sure that everyone is following your protocol?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, I don't want to mistake the question. There's the tragedy of the loss of life versus -- again, it's only what I've read, is that some players didn't think that the culture was very strong. Our coaches are responsible for a positive environment and culture, as well, how they coach. When I say demanding, never demeaning, that goes for everybody, and anything in this program is my responsibility. As it relates to protocol relative to the young man that tragically passed, that's really outside my purview. That would fall under our athletic trainers and the protocols they have in place.

Q. Switching gears, since Liam locked down the left tackle spot, what have you liked that you've seen from him, and what's he still need to work on before Michigan?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, so Liam, you know, we all kind of sense that he had the physical ability to do it. It's confidence, right; he's in there every day against two dynamic pass rushers, guys that can play at a high level, and so I think every day what he gets is confidence in his ability to play left tackle at Notre Dame. I think that's probably the biggest thing. Now, certainly Coach Quinn is working on technique and recognition and fronts and things of that nature. Don't get me wrong, this isn't just about feeling good every day, but confidence probably would be No. 1.

Q. We discussed Armstrong and C'Bo and Davis a little earlier, but overall, the running back position, how is that progressing, and specifically with Tony Jones, what have you liked with him and what are some things he's continuing to work on?
BRIAN KELLY: You know, Tony has run with a physicality. What we're asking for him is to be consistent in all facets as a pass protector, as a guy to catch the ball out of the backfield. We want a solid guy to go to and that we can count on him in kind of all situations, if you will, pressure situations, short yardage, as I mentioned, catching the ball out of the backfield. We need a guy that we can really hang our hat on in tough times, and he's going to be that guy.

And then he gets supported with a number of other skill players with Armstrong and Avery, and then obviously Dexter is going to continue to work and see how that plays out. So there's a lot of other guys that can complement him. But what we need is for him to be that steady influence in our offense play in and play out.

Q. You talked a little bit about Tranquill and his leadership qualities. Obviously moving, the transition to linebacker, it's not necessarily new. How did the vision from being back there at safety help him at linebacker being a little closer to the line?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, certainly playing experience has helped him a lot, especially being at the rover. He knows the fits and how they work and how it kind of sets up his fits at the Will linebacker position.

I think what happened here is when we moved him, his instincts were really good for a box player. Sometimes they're not quite as easily seen. In other words, he doesn't feel the ball, the ball carrier, and where his fits are, he just naturally had a nice nose for it right away, and he's progressed in pass coverage and all the little pieces of that position.

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