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UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 14, 2019

Brian Kelly

South Bend, Indiana

New Mexico - 14, Notre Dame - 66

COACH BRIAN KELLY: Well, pleased with the victory, certainly, at home. You know, I thought that our team kind of found themselves a little bit today. We had been looking to go into a second week here and put the pieces together and I think by and large, they started to fall together for us today. You know, you saw a number of different players on the offensive side of the ball have significant roles in what we did offensively, and that was kind of, you know what we were expecting to kind of happen today and it came to fruition.

You know, I think the defense kind of set it up for us, the big interception by that kid, 14, who is -- he's around the ball. I mean, he just has a great nose for the football and the interception for a touchdown, you know, got us some great momentum, and then we were able to feed off that.

I thought Avery Davis's electric run, who we incidentally gave the game ball to, for him being so humbles and a player and unselfish to flip from quarterback to running back to defense and back to the offensive side of the ball and come up big with an electric run that really got the entire team and the stadium into it.

So a lot of really good things and things we can certainly improve upon and certainly the competition will be ratcheted up. I thought New Mexico played hard. They are well-coached. We certainly still, you know -- our thoughts are with Coach Davie. It sounds like he's making a great recovery. I know he was disappointed that he couldn't make the trip here, but you know, he's certainly got a football team that's going to compete and play hard in the Mountain West for him.

With that, I know you've already talked to the players, so let me see if I can try to stay on task with what they have said.

Q. You mentioned sort of the pieces falling into place. You know what this offense can be, but how significant from a confidence perspective is it for the players to experience it in a game?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: Well, I think that's part and parcel in terms of what I was saying. Braden Lenzy needed to make a play, right. He needed to make that big catch. I think C'Bo needed to go in there and pick up a couple of blitzes and make a couple plays and a couple of good runs.

Javon McKinley needed to make a big play, which he made a couple of really big plays. He's been a guy that has been kind of lost in, you know, cyberspace, if you will, and he's now going to have to play a significant role.

So all of these guys needed to make a play. Ian Book needed to make a play. I think he needed to make that throw to Chase Claypool, and all those things needed to come together. We thought they would, and we saw them come together this afternoon.

Q. Ian Book, I know you haven't watched the tape yet but do you feel better about his performance today than you did a couple weeks ago?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: Absolutely.

Q. And where did that maybe hit you the most?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: Technically, settled down. Was in the pocket. You know, got pressured. Had to deliver the football under duress. Setting his feet. Just all those things that we didn't see against Louisville, so again, game two -- and again, I want to cautious everybody that it's so different when you practice -- for us, almost six, eight, seven weeks now where you've only played one game; you need to play at real speed.

So to get this game under our belts going into Georgia, it was really big for us and to get Ian into a rhythm really helped today a lot.

Q. 67 percent of Javon's catches this year are for touchdowns. Just how great is it to have him be out there and obviously making plays, and with that success rate, do you think about maybe throwing the ball a bit more?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, we're going to -- I'm going to need you on the sidelines to keep me -- (Laughter) -- listen, I don't know how to respond to that, other than I'm a moron.

Q. If it comes with a pay raise, I'm in.
COACH BRIAN KELLY: And you're absolutely right. You know, he -- look, he's a physical presence. As you know, he got on the field in a first-team rotation, so we're starting to get it here, and figure it out, that he's not a No. 2. He can play as a No. 1.

So we like his size. We like what he's done. Look, he would have been playing a long time ago if -- if we had the young man playing at a consistent level. He is showing that. He is practicing well. He is doing the right things both on and off the field. You guys don't want to hear this but all those traits are starting to show themselves, and he's preparing himself for a big year for us.

Q. And I guess, you know, knowing what kind of -- Shaun Crawford and all the injuries he's gone through, when he gets an interception, emotionally, how do you feel?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, we made note of it in the post-game talk about individual plays. It was great to see him. He was in and around the football, again, quite a bit today, as he usually is. He finds the football, as well, and you know, just to, you know, think back on the lows that -- that he's had to go through and to see him today come up with a big play, yeah, it's kind of nice.

Q. How do you explain Kyle Hamilton's ability to be around the football?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: I mean, it starts with you know, really good vision, and he recognizes things for the first really well. Route recognition is outstanding. Some have a good pattern read recognition. Some don't. He knows that when two is going to the flat, one it probably breaking back towards him, and he just has a natural sense and feel for route recognition. Two go vertical; I'm going to stay on top of two. Some guys have it. Some guys struggle with it. He's got that in natural ability and then length, obviously helps quite a bit.

Q. You had mentioned that there were some checks that maybe weren't made in your third and short in the last game. How do you think Ian Book handled that this game?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: It was better. It was better. I think we were still, you know, there's still room for improvement there. I'm not too concerned about some of the things that happened. We missed one or two of them. We'll go back and take a look at it. I'll have to probably pass on getting into too specifics because I think we were 1 for 10 total.

But again, so many of them, there's another ten guys in there that I have to kind of process and then there's the play call and so there's other things involved.

I know there was one in particular where the ball should have been somewhere else, but other than that, I -- it's hard for me to --

Q. I did want to mention the 1-for-10 because you were also 5-for-5 on fourth down. I'm sure you don't look at that as a wash because I know you can't always go for it on fourth down depending on where you are on the field, but how concerned are you with the 1-for-10?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: So some of it is set up for fourth down. Our analytics, some of it might be getting some of it back on third down, you know, to set up a fourth down play, too. There are some, you know, again, we could hash this out for a while, but there are mitigating factors in that 1-for-10 and I'd have to go through each one of them.

Q. The third and short conversions, continues to be a struggle. How do you go forward with that against a team like Georgia that may not be as forgiving come next week?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: We see exactly what you see. Obviously those are the things that we're going to have to continue to work on. You know, we're certainly not a finished product by any means. So we know the things that have to, you know, improve as a football team. I think everybody in the NFL and college football knows that their short yardage has got to be efficient.

Yeah, that will be -- that will be something that we'll spend time on over the next couple of days and look at the things that we need to do to be better in those areas.

Q. Are you playing Georgia at the right time? Because you had that gap between this game to improve, and I assume you gained some confidence today.
COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know that there's ever -- you know, I don't know if you ever look at a right time or a wrong time. I think we needed this game to kind of, as I mentioned earlier, to find some of the pieces that are going to be needed to make explosive plays. You're not going to beat Georgia by just three yards here, four yards. You're going to have to make some explosive plays. We needed to see that happen today.

Having said that, we can't give up big plays like we did in the running game today and we have to find explosive plays on our offense. Those two came together today against New Mexico. Doesn't mean they are coming against Georgia, but we know a little bit more about our football team, which allows us to put together a plan of action as we go and tackle a very good opponent on the road.

Q. And going back a ways, but what went into the decision to keep McKinley in school and give him another chance?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: Boy, there was a lot to it. Advocacy from across campus. He had had really, a clean record with -- with us. This was -- I don't want to say an aberration, but it was something that had never happened before, which earned him the opportunity to get a second chance.

Q. You mentioned Kyren Williams and Braden Lenzy earlier. When you were talking about trying to be dynamic in your offense, do you feel like they earned your trust today; that they could be bigger pieces going forward, or at least important pieces?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: They earned -- they earned what we asked them today to do and that was: You have to be part of our offense moving forward. When we call your number today, you need to make a play, and they did. We didn't ask them to catch ten balls today. We asked them to make a play for us so we can now get you involved in our offense and each one of them did that.

We asked C'Bo Flemister to pick up a blitzer. He did. We asked him to run hard on the goal line and he did. He picked up a penalty for -- a procedure penalty, because he was giving some instruction on a play and he wasn't sure exactly what he was given, and so he was looking back and all he said to me was, "I just want to earn your trust, and I'm trying to do the right thing."

I said, "You have our trust. Just go out and play."

And so that's -- all these kids want to do well, so bad, that they ask us more about it than anybody else. So all we told them after the game was, look, you're doing great. It doesn't mean you have to do it for 40 or 50 plays, just make the play when we call, and I think we'll have them moving forward for those plays.

Q. I could imagine you could put Davis's pass and Finke's pass into the run pile.
COACH BRIAN KELLY: Sure.

Q. But in the big picture, you mentioned to us at the beginning of season, running the ball and stopping the run were two big identity points for you. Where do you feel you are with those two things right now?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: I think good. I mean, we've got to have better -- look, you know, stopping the run by and large, you know, they were committed to running the football today. I think they had almost 50 carries. You can't -- you know, you can't beat us, you know, running it 50 times with just two big plays. We don't want to give up any big plays. Our top-down run support's got to be better. Our safety support's got to be better to. It our fit by the backers has got to be better. We'll get that cleaned up. We're not getting pushed off the ball. We're not getting manhandled. None of that concerns me at all.

From an offensive line standpoint, could we have been better today? Probably. But they weren't going to let us run the ball up inside, so we are going to move to some of the things that we can do. We threw for almost 450 yards.

That's the nature of college football today. You'd better be able to do both. If you can't run it because they don't want you to run it, you'd better throw it, and if you can't, you're in trouble, and I think we can do both.

Q. Regarding Davis, he's obviously spent time on your offense in the past but it's been a while. What is it about him that he was able to walk into that situation with very little work over the last several months and be productive today and how big was his playbook, or did we just see the short role that you had for him and it worked?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: It was bigger than what we featured today. We wanted to get him involved a little bit today and we didn't want to show a whole lot today. So he's a smart kid, played high school football at a very good program. Knows the game well. Was able to retain most of our offense.

Quite frankly, we wanted to be able to lean on C'Bo a little bit more today, Kyren a little bit more today, and he was going to get some scripted touches more than having the entire offensive playbook at his disposal.

Q. I've heard you've got something called a 24-hour rule. Will you take the full 24 to enjoy this, or does the opportunity and the challenge in front of you coerce you to pretty quickly start thinking about what's seven days in front of you?
COACH BRIAN KELLY: What's 24 hours take us till? 6 o'clock?

Q. Ish.
COACH BRIAN KELLY: No. We'll be in at 10:00 a.m. so whatever that is, the math on that, we'll get back in at 10:00 a.m. and get to work on Georgia, I take that back. We'll watch the film at 10:00 and be done with it by 1:00 so I can answer questions on injuries and things like that from Eric (Laughter) and we'll move on to Georgia.

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