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UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 13, 2018

Brian Kelly

South Bend, Indiana

Pittsburgh - 14, Notre Dame - 19

HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: Excited about the win. Moves us to a bye week and it gives us a chance to kind of regroup and we had a tough week, our guys were in mid terms this week and they could use a few days to regroup and get ready for the next five games which are going to be really difficult ones, but we are proud of our guys, their grit. They hung in there and found a way to win. It's college football. Hard to win each and every week, and you're going to have some of these games, and they found a way to win.

So pretty excited about it. Fire away.

Q. Ian Book seemed to have some happy feet in the first half. Was there a specific message to him to get him to calm down a little bit?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, he was 14 for 15 for 156 yards and two touchdowns in the second half. How did we do with that?

Q. I think you did all right.
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: Okay. Next question. (Laughter).

Q. You've had a couple of these victories now where you've played sluggish but still found a way to win. What does that say about maybe this team this year, about their resolve?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, you know, I don't know if we were sluggish. Sluggish to me, it's hard to define when you mean by sluggish and what I perceive sluggish to be. Sluggish is tired, more tired. I mean, we were not sharp mentally. We didn't execute efficiently. If that's what sluggish means, then, you know, that's what we were.

They weren't at their best, and Pittsburgh played well. I mean, they did a great job. We had one possession in the first quarter. They played exactly the way they needed to play to keep this game in the manner that they did, and we still found a way, giving up a kickoff return for a touchdown, throwing two picks and not scoring touchdowns in the red zone.

So having said all that, if you told me all those things are going to happen and we still found a way to win the football game, I'd be pretty excited.

Q. Going back to the kickoff return, was that a planned short kick or was the goal to kick it to the back of the end zone?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: Our goal is to kick it deep and out of the back of the end zone, yes.

Q. Just sort of expound a little bit on Clark Lea as a communicator, building confidence in that defense where if they have to essentially go from the first drive to the end, pitching a shutout, that there didn't team to be a whole lot of nerves on that side of the ball.
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, right. So last play, our last couple plays, we have two true freshmen out there that I can play on the ball. He keeps me calm. You know, I'm like, "Hello? Is there somebody up there in the press box on defense?" You know, that's Clark. He just has a steady sense about him. He's calling defenses and putting our kids in good position.

And then the thing for me where I was a little concerned is when you have your coordinator in the box, what he's thinking in the communication down on to the field and that's gone really well.

Having Elston, Mike Elston, that kind of pushes that through the coaches, has gone really well. So we are making good adjustments on the field and Clark has, as you said, he just has a nice presence about him where that information gets down to the kids, we're able to make the corrections and move on.

Q. And your pass rush just sort of in general, that's been a consistent presence week-after-week after week. When you have that, is that something that you can have faith in over a 12-game schedule? Some things will be up and down, but if you have a good pass rush, that's going to carry over week-after-week?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: I was talking to Jack Swarbrick, our athletic director, a little about this. Some of the statistical things that are interesting. We're about 115th in the country in terms of completions per game. I think we're like 10th or 12th in terms of yards per completion and a lot of that is because we don't have to big pressure because our four-man rush is getting pressure.

So you may get some completions, but they are very short completions. We're coming up and making tackles. We're keeping the ball in front of us and that's the kind of defense that we're playing right now.

Q. During the week, I asked you about Ian, sort of game plan; you mentioned it's understanding pressure and it's understanding drop eight. What success Pittsburgh had, is it more that element?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: No, I think if we really wanted to do a dive on this and get into it, you know, the first two red zone possessions, you know, field goals, settling for field goals, he had Miles Boykin on a touchdown and he gets his hand jarred, you know, for a touchdown.

His pocket awareness was not great in the first half. Had a nice conversation with him in the second half. He settled down nicely, but I think this is just maturation.

You know, seeing things, feeling them and then, you know, as I mentioned, had a great second half. I mean, if you take away a couple -- I think he had one incompletion, and if we can work on his sliding skills to get the ten full yards, he'd be flawless in the second half.

Q. Julian Okwara was credited with seven quarterback hurries. Some are good statisticians and had him for 12. Can you evaluate what his game, what he means to the pass rush and why you gave him the game ball?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: It's a good observation. He harasses the quarterback more so than, you know -- I think we were even talking about this earlier in the week in terms of, you know, quarterback sacks versus hurries. He gets quarterbacks uncomfortable. They move their feet. They change their -- their launch point, their eyes drop. Things just make them uncomfortable.

But if you look at his overall game, I think the play that he made on third down, where he gets the back coming out of the backfield for a five-yard loss, tells more about his overall game. His ability to drop out of coverage and make a play like that on a running back, he's a pretty special player. He does a lot of things that sometimes don't show up on the stat sheet, per se, nationally, but he's one dynamic player.

Q. On offense, was what Pitt was doing defensively just made it not worth proving your point that you could run on them when you had to?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: It was tough sledding. They had the seventh player that was so tight for the box. You saw what we did in the second half. Chase Claypool was wide open every single time we wanted to throw the slant to him. He was so tainted in the box and maybe we were a little stubborn. We should have thrown the ball a little bit more.

This should have been maybe been 45 to 50 times throwing the football; it was that stark in terms of the pressure that they were putting on the running game today. And you know, we want to try to stay balanced. We want to try to stay true to who we are. Today was -- they weren't going to allow that to happen.

Q. In the fourth down that you didn't end up going for it where you ended up punting, how close were you to going for that fourth down there?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: Well, I'd like to say that I forced them to take a time-out because, you know, I was going to go for it. I was. Our analytics tells us to go for it, so I'll get a note from our analytics people on Monday telling me that I was incorrect and that I should have gone for it.

The sense I had in the game, however, is that they weren't going to go 80 yards on us, so I was not going to give our defense a short field to operate. So I went against our mathematicians in that situation.

And that's why I went for two, as well. The analytics provided us the information that said to go for two in that situation.

Q. Pittsburgh's fake punt in the fourth down, what's your conversation with Brian Polian where it seemed like they might not be punting in that situation? Did you guys have a conversation?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, let's be prepared for it. We have a team that we call magic that we put out there that is set for fake punts and offensive sets. It's a group that is set just for that. So it's prepared for fakes.

Q. So when they are in that realm or that range of the field -- they were the one -- it's different than your regular punt return, obviously?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, there's a couple of units that we have, there's a couple of different players on that unit and it works primarily on shifts, fakes, those kinds of formation adjustments that they may get into.

Q. Another pass rush question for you. Seems like a lot of the success is based on the collective group there. What about their skill-sets mesh together so well and does that make this group sort of unique from good lines you've had in the past?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: You know, a lot of that, as you know, we don't bring a lot of pressures, right, so a lot of is line gains; so those guys being able to work together unselfishly to take themselves in some instances out of a sack, individually.

If they are working just as individuals, Julian Okwara would have a lot more sacks. But he's in a lot of twists and stunts and a lot of line games that sets up some other sacks for other guys.

So I think just the unselfish play of four guys up front that are working together to try to put together a good pass rush.

Q. The first three or four games of the season, the offense would come out, first possession, score a touchdown. Defense comes out and they would, you know, hold the team and not score. The last couple weeks, you guys have faced a little bit of adversity in those areas. Can you talk about how the adversity is going to help this team down the road?
HEAD COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, you know, I just think it's the duration of a season, right. There's ebbs and flows. There's ups and downs. I think you just experience it. I think our guys learned a lot from today's game in terms of, you know, hanging in there and having patience and finding ways to overcome some adversity. You know, very rarely do you give up a kickoff return for a touchdown, throw a pick, do some of the things we did today, and still find a way to win the football game.

A lot of good things that we can take from it. We obviously can't play like this week-in and week-out and feel like we're going to win every game we play.

But you're going to have some of these, and you've got to -- you've got to grow from them, and I really like our football team. They will grow from this. They will learn from it and we'll be better because of it.

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