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UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 28, 2019

Brian Kelly

South Bend, Indiana

Virginia - 20 - Notre Dame - 35

BRIAN KELLY: Great game, proud of my, my staff. It was not an easy week, challenged our football team, right after the Georgia game, this would be a defining game. That's hard to do after playing a very emotional game against Georgia to come out as the head coach and tell your team this week will be a defining game. In some instances that's not very fair, but we challenged them, they accepted the challenge, the staff accepted the challenge, and they responded. They were exactly what I wanted them to be. They were determined, they were persistent, they didn't panic, maybe teams earlier that I've had here would not have found a way to win that game, but this is a group that has really developed a persistence about them in the way they do things on a day-to-day basis. This is not just about playing football this is about the way they do things every single day and it showed up.

Virginia has played extremely well in the second half and has won games in the second half and we took over that game in the second half.

So really proud of our staff, really proud of our players, and really good win against the 18th ranked team in the country. So with that we'll open it up to questions.

Q. Obviously eight sacks from the defensive line today, just kind of speaks a little bit about what the game plan was coming into today and obviously they executed it to almost perfection there?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, look, we didn't go in thinking eight sacks was the margin here, the ball comes out really quick, obviously Perkins played flawlessly in the first half, 20 of 23. The ball came out accurately, on time, made great throws. We wanted to make sure that the pocket collapsed on him and made it difficult for him to get outside and improvise. We stuck with our game plan.

Again, I challenged our staff to be stubborn and persistent and determined and we did that. It broke through for us in a manner that we saw, a lot of those sacks really come together in the second half.

Q. Okwara specifically, unbelievable game from him. To see him finally get the sack numbers and the forced fumbles and all that goes with it, just speak to his performance.
BRIAN KELLY: Julian -- I love what Julian did. He got back to playing really physical football. I think Julian would tell you that maybe the whole kind of sack thing was too much of a personal thing and he got back to playing physical football and within the realm of the defense and it really showed itself today and he's going to take off from here.

Q. With those, with Virginia scoring at the end of the first half and then the onside kick to start the second half, what was the message to overcome those potential momentum swings?
BRIAN KELLY: I didn't have time to make any messages, there was no talk. Just keep playing. Keep playing. Our defense stepped up there. We didn't execute very well there, obviously. Our job, I know Brian pulled them over right before that kick because they took the wind, they kicked into the wind, so we kind of were like, okay, why are they kicking into the wind here. So we alerted our guys to be alert here and we were not. So just said, keep playing. And our defense did, came up with a big stop there. Yeah, you don't have much time under those circumstances to have a sit down and talk, it's just like keep playing, be determined, be stubborn, we'll figure it out.

Q. 178 to 4 to opponent rush yards. Is this what you envisioned when you spoke in the pre-season about defining the season by success establishing the run and stopping the opponent run?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, look, we're still -- I'm not standing up here and telling you we have found ourselves offensively, we have not. We're far from where we want to be. We have got a lot of things to sort out and figure out offensively, personnel, but what we did is we gave Tony Jones a break. So he ran hard in the second half and in particular the third and fourth quarter. When we got C'Bo in there and we got Jamir in there, it gave him a chance to run the way he can run. And he's a hard runner.

We got off the ball, we were much more physical in the third and fourth quarter, what we want to be able to do is have that as part of our offense and it had been missing. So that has to be part of what we do.

On the other hand, from a rushing standpoint, we want to continue to be a team that doesn't give up big plays in the running game. Four yards rushing, you know, a lot of that is the negative in, obviously, the sacks. But at the end of the day finding a balance within our offense is something that is still a work in progress, but defensively continue to go in the route we're going with the development of our front seven and finding a really solid front seven that doesn't give up big runs.

Q. You might not have much but anything on the injury to Claypool, Crawford and Hayes?
BRIAN KELLY: Claypool rolled up his ankle, so he was fighting through that, did the best he could. Who was the other one?

Q. Crawford and Daelin?
BRIAN KELLY: Crawford, elbow. We'll get an a MRI on that see where he is. And then Daelin Hayes is a shoulder and we'll get that looked at here tomorrow.

Q. You just mentioned the negative yards, which really limited the rushing total. You anticipated Perkins being a headache. How were you able to contain him and really limit his affect?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, I mean tactically there's a lot of things that you can't do. You can't play a lot of man, you can't play a hole player, because if you play a deep hole player then the deep hole player's got the quarterback. And so he limits you in a lot of areas. So we had to get a great pass rush and we had to contain him with our front four, we had to put our corners on an island quite a bit and force him to throw the football. Which he did, give him credit, first half he was great.

In the second half we were able to get to him quickly and he had to get the ball out of his hand quickly and that was really the difference in the game for us. They could not run the ball between the tackles when they wanted to run the football with a five and a half man box. If they could, that would have required us to do other things.

Q. Last two weeks you've faced a pretty big defensive line in both Georgia and with Virginia. Virginia was number one in the country in sacks. You kept them away from Book again, that's two weeks in a row, two big defenses and you are keeping Book pretty safe.
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I mean it's -- we know how to protect, I mean, look, it's kind of like one of these deals where what do you want to do? Do you want to free release the back and be in a five man? They're going to bring over load blitzes. So we had to settle in on some things in the second half that were a little bit more conservative in nature, but we're looking to win the football game. Our defense was going to play well and so we made some tactical decisions at halftime to let our defense play. We were going to get the football, we had some untimely penalties in that first drive, but again I think we're doing a good job protecting our quarterback, our quarterback's smart, we get in the right protections, we just got to be a little bit more efficient offensively.

Q. With the four-game rule to preserve a year of eligibility it gives you a whole different aspect --
BRIAN KELLY: You guys ask so many questions that are so difficult to answer. My goodness, my brain blows up talking to you guys. I wish I could be at like a normal press conference sometimes. You guys are so smart. I mean --

Q. Whatever you say we'll quote you.
BRIAN KELLY: Okay, go ahead. I mean, it's amazing. I wish I could just say, hey, you guys ran really hard today and it was a great game it was amazing. So go ahead.

Q. I'm going to ask you about Jamir Jones and I know you don't want to say you went into this trying to preserve a year of eligibility, but he was --
BRIAN KELLY: He was on scout team this week.

Q. I know. He said that. I know he said that.
BRIAN KELLY: Oh, he was in front of you guys?

Q. Yeah.
BRIAN KELLY: Okay. Well, you know more than I do. See, that's the whole thing. You should get my wife up here. She knows more about this than I do.

Q. We rarely have an opportunity to ask you about him, if you could talk about his --
BRIAN KELLY: Great teammate, I mean he's a stud. He's just, he does everything we ask him to do. Great person, great teammate, works his butt off and a really, really good football player.

Q. If you could preserve a year of eligibility you will, correct?
BRIAN KELLY: I mean --

Q. I mean that's what I say, if you can. I mean, maybe you can't do that.
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, well we're going to have to see what Daelin Hayes' situation is, to be quite frank with you. We are here to win this year and we'll figure it out from there.

Q. I've got nothing else.
BRIAN KELLY: All right. Thanks. That's why my head hurts.

Q. Myron is saying that he was told that he was 21 miles an hour.
BRIAN KELLY: No, no, no, he was not. He was not. He can float that with you guys, but he was probably closer to 17 or 18.

Q. Why do we love watching the big guys run and what how much do players the skill guys enjoy watching the big guys run down the field?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, I think if you pull for anybody you pull for a guy like Myron. A lot of this is about they love their teammates, they love the way they play, they love the fact that -- obviously he's a guy that played so well last week and then he gets rewarded this week and, God, he almost got to the end zone too. But I think it's more about the guys that are rewarded for the hard work and being a great teammate. And he was injured last year and he's having great success this year. So it's a brotherhood, these guys really enjoy playing with each other, we have got a good group of guys, they got challenged today, they responded to a great challenge, they were down at halftime, they didn't flinch, they didn't blink, they played really, really good football in the second half and I'm really proud of them.

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