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UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 15, 2018Brian KellySouth Bend, Indiana Notre Dame - 22, Vanderbilt - 17 BRIAN KELLY: Well, really proud of my football team and the way they competed today. You know, challenged after last week's performance in their preparation and then how they compete. Compete every play, play physical, and they did that today. So, yeah, there's things we've got to work on. It's the third game of the season. If you're a finished product after game three, you know, you're destined for greatness, and we're not there yet. We're not destined for greatness. So if anyone wants to write that greatness column, I would tap the brakes. But proud of their effort, proud of the way they competed. They played Notre Dame football. We're still evolving. I mean, I'd like to say we're a finished product, we're just not. I mean, we're trying to find our identity on offense. I think we're a good defense. We're not a great defense yet. We've got some things to clean up, but, boy, I really, really like our football team and the way they competed today. Now, we've got to do that each and every week, right? I mean, prepare the right way, and then compete, get after it, be physical, run the football. That's an SEC team who ran it for, I don't know, 250 yards. I think that's pretty good. So there's a lot of things, a lot of positives from it. So with that, we'll open it up to questions. Q. Brandon ran a lot more today. Was that part of the game plan? BRIAN KELLY: You know, we keep going through this. Brandon is part of our running game. We want to focus on the things that he does well, and he runs the football. He also throws it, and he also is a good leader and he's a great competitor. So some weeks he may run it more than others, but he's one of our really good runners, so I think we all should just kind of get used to the fact that he's going to be part of our running game each and every week. Some weeks he may get more carries than others, but he's certainly part of it, yes. Q. Do you think that gives you an advantage having a guy who can run the ball, maybe salvage some plays that don't work? BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, well, certainly. Anytime you have a quarterback that has that ability to extend plays, there is a definite benefit there. But if the net result is a turnover or poor decisions, no, it's not an advantage. We saw last week, as you know, he didn't make good decisions. That's not him. He's not been that sloppy, bad-decision kind of guy. He makes good decisions, and we saw that again today. You saw the kind of player he is in the two out of three games that we played, and I think that's much more towards the trend of who he is. Q. Is there a way to take some of the comfort in the scripted series, three games in a row, that have really come out quickly and gotten down the field and apply it to the rest of the game? BRIAN KELLY: You know, I was asked that question again earlier in the week. We don't script them, so they're not really scripted plays. We just get into a good flow early on, and, you know, what we probably need to do is be more repeaters of plays. In other words, go back to plays that have been successful and come back and repeat them. Q. Well, one play it seems you did repeat with that pseudo wheel route to Tony Jones up the sideline. Was there something you saw in Vanderbilt that that could be applicable? BRIAN KELLY: Lot of manned coverage, so we're getting the wheel, drive, big combination. So if you do a good job defending him, then we're creating space on the drive route coming back, so they're really easy complements for us versus man coverage. Q. No sacks today, and 5.1 yards per carry rushing. What do you feel like the offensive line did today that you were pleased with that you wanted to see? BRIAN KELLY: Again, we had a tough week last week, and I think a lot of it fell on me, and I did a poor job preparing our football team. You know, there was a lot of movement, a lot of stunting, things that I wish that I did a better job. That's behind us. We got back to what we do in terms of our preparation for our football team. And I was confident that we would come out and be the group that I believe we can be. We're far from where we need to be as an offensive line, as an offensive group, as I mentioned earlier. But we're capable of running the football with some effectiveness. And the other thing that you're seeing is a maturation of both running backs. We saw some things today, and I'm sure you all were observant of it as well, was we were running today light much better, we saw our cuts, we were fitting much better. That's why I say, we're three games into this. But we had two really good opponents that have tested us, and I think you're going to start to see that there's much more of a confidence level starting to emerge with that group that they can be effective all year. Q. You had mentioned that Book and Wimbush have both bought into switching the quarterbacks and so forth. But from a pragmatic standpoint of getting a guy in, taking him out, getting him back in, how do you make that work and run smoothly and keep them in a rhythm? BRIAN KELLY: Certainly it's got to be practice. So it's something that we're working on during the week. Everybody's alert, and there has to be a package that you feel confident in. It can't be -- it can't be wholesale on everything that you do. So there are specific things that we're doing, and we're drilling down that our whole offense is quite aware of, that these are the plays, this is the package that we're working on. So it doesn't cut across everything that we do. There is some intentionality, if you will, to what we're doing when he goes in, and I think everybody else knows what it is. Q. What was your take on the play where it ended up with Julian earning the touchback? BRIAN KELLY: Well, I will say this, we got caught behind the widened post, where, from a technical standpoint, inside the 20 we have to play over the top. But what I was pleased with is that it's a drill we work on, is that we come up through the receiver try to strip. So we stayed with the play right through the whistle and got the ball out. The ball got, as you saw, it was a rugby scrum in the end zone, and we were able to get on it. We had a play like that last year against Michigan State as well. We stayed with the play. I think that's the key. Q. You kept using the word compete. Elliott on breaking up that 4th and 4, is that what you're talking about? BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, so as we define compete, you know, is six seconds. The play is six seconds. We want our players playing through that six seconds. We felt like we were pulling off plays a little early last week, so the emphasis was defining what compete meant. It's kind of like the old adage of don't run to the cone, run through the cone. We felt like maybe we ran to the cone too much last week. Q. Brandon had some struggles with trying to commit to a slide or just to take a hit. What can he do to make sure he's taking a slide so he doesn't get injured? BRIAN KELLY: Well, that's a pretty astute observation, because I felt the same way. So you and I are astute together. You know, he ran really hard. I think last week we were a little concerned about him not running and finishing off the runs. And today he ran really hard, and he got to the marker. I think he was just looking around too much. He just needs to finish off those runs. He's much better finishing them off than pulling up. He has a better chance of finishing clean than pulling out of them. So I think you're right. It's a conversation we'll sit down, we'll show him the film, because I think the observation is right. We want him to finish those runs off. Q. If I could follow up with one more for the defense, Julian Love, this is the third week a different guy has stepped up for you on defense. It's a pretty good problem to have. BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, so, we had this conversation about if you have players on all three levels of your defense, which we have. Each week we've had different players from the defensive line to linebacker, to the back end of the defense, whether it's the corner, the safety, whether it's Coney, whether it's Khalid Kareem, you're probably putting together a pretty good defensive product, and kind of that's what we're seeing. Q. I said the defense was good, not great? BRIAN KELLY: That's right. Q. To have greatness ability, and if so? BRIAN KELLY: It has a chance to grow and get better. Q. In what aspects? BRIAN KELLY: Well, we're, you know, assignment correct. You know, we -- a couple of times we didn't blitz a safety and we leave the tight end uncovered. We lose eyes on a couple plays here and there. Look, we're in the end zone, and we intercept the ball and we pull it out on the 1-yard line. Just these little things that can bump you from good to really good, to really doing some amazing things. So we're three games into it, and I think we're doing some good things. But there is really room for improvement. Not from the effort standpoint, but from a technical and tactical standpoint I think we can get better. Q. The safety position in particular, how much better are you there than this time last year? Is it night and day? BRIAN KELLY: I could use all the analogies in the world, but we're getting significant production from that position. Q. Maybe for the first time this season you really got positive stuff from all three phases, Newsome, you know, Michael Young's kickoff return. How significant a lesson do you think that needs to be for this team to hit its potential that all of it is going to have to work? BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, that's a good question. We've put in so much time, and I mean significant time in practice. I've adjusted our practice. We're usually about a 15 to 17-minute daily organizational partition for S.T., and we've gone to 20 to 22 minutes. I've been waiting for that to come to fruition. I thought it would because we've been spending so much time on it. You know, Newsome's a senior. He's been through a lot. We think he's got a live leg. But we haven't seen the consistency, and today we certainly did. We know, we maybe rushed the kick and probably didn't serve him well to let the clock run down and maybe spooked him a little bit. But to get the kickoff return, to get John kicking it the way he can, the coverage necessary, it's going to be huge for us. Look, you see us early on in three games. We're not going to beat you 52-3. We're going to grind it out. We're going to play tough, hard-nosed, blue collared football, and we're going to need our special teams to be really good, and that's, yeah, I'd like to say I know that we're going to play better and have a better identity on offense because we can do some really good things, but our special teams is going to have to be there for us. Q. Is what you've seen through the first three games about what you thought you would see on August 4th, when you started at come culver, or has there been a surprise and gone a little different way than you would have expected? BRIAN KELLY: No, I thought we'd have some growing pains on offense in terms of young backs. You know, I think the pieces are there, but it was going to take some time, especially knowing what the schedule looked like early. We were going to have to really play physical and play hard, and play every play. Q. Nick Weishar, obviously you spoke so highly of him throughout the preseason. For him to get a touchdown, what do you think that meant to the group as a whole to kind of see a guy like that score? BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, well, he means a lot to the group. He's a leader. You know, look, I mean, everybody talks about this, but behind the walls, in the clubhouse, in the locker room, he is a very influential player on our football team. So when he gets in the game, it's important to him, and when he makes plays, it sends a real positive feeling amongst our football team. And I thought he got the first down too, by the way. Not that anybody wants my opinion. But it sure looked like he did. So he really has a heartbeat for our football team. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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