	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 12, 2019

Brian Kelly

South Bend, Indiana

Notre Dame - 30, USC - 27

BRIAN KELLY: Well, exciting football game. Really for our guys, they prepared so well for this game because it was so unique in that we were playing a team that was presenting an offensive structure that we hadn't seen all year, and they were coming off a bye week, and we knew that there were going to be some things that we were going to have to adjust to. So it was interesting.

You know, we were excited as a staff to play the game, obviously, because it's USC, but we were also -- it was one of those things where, okay, what are we going to have to make adjustments to during the game. After the game in the locker room when you get a chance to kind of debrief about it, you feel really good that what you put in was going to be effective. There were a couple of plays out there that we needed to make, but we put our kids in good position to succeed tonight, took USC's best shot. Congratulations to them. They played a very, very good football game. Clay had them playing very well.

But again, to win against your rival is one of the things that we've wanted to do, and it's a traveling trophy that's important to us, and to come out as the winner tonight, we're very, very pleased.

Proud of my team. Proud of my coaches. Again, really good football game that we're excited to have won. With that, I'll get to your questions because I'm sure there's a couple of them.

Q. In the fourth quarter they cut it to three and you get the ball back and you go on a drive that eats up a lot of clock, it culminates in a touchdown. I'm curious if you could talk about how critical that was to the result, and I wonder what it says about your offense that you were able to pull that off?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, that's how you have to win games. Whatever means necessary to win a football game, whether it's throwing the football or running the football, you have to be equally effective. They were playing a two-deep zone, and it was important that we ran the football in that situation. Our offensive line, tight ends did a great job blocking. Tony Jones was outstanding again in the fourth quarter, just like he was against Virginia, and again, taking a lot of time off the clock, I thought Chip did a really good job of being measured in terms of not wanting to push tempo but to use clock in that situation. So just a well-orchestrated drive that ate a lot of clock, because obviously they had that quick touchdown, and it was important from my perspective that we take some time with that drive.

Q. I feel like we talked about Tony Jones every week now, but how much has your confidence in him grown over the last month?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, look, Tony has been kind of pigeonholed into this kind of journeyman back, but he does so many things well. He just doesn't have 4.3 speed. But he blocks, he's tough, he's physical, he's going to get you the extra yard. Who wouldn't want a back like that? You know, he plays through nicks and bumps. He practices hard. He's a great teammate. Give me a boat load of Tony Joneses and I'll take them in a heartbeat.

Q. The Braden Lenzy touchdown, can you talk about the play, why it was time to call it, and then obviously Braden giving you a little bit more --
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, no doubt. We're trying to find roles for Braden and breaking him into our lineup. As you can see he's got great speed. We pulled both the backside guard and tackle. One of our big plays is the counter play, very aggressive inside backers flowing to the football. They were over the top on a couple of plays, and we're like, this is a perfect time for it. So we had set it up accordingly, and I thought the timing was outstanding. Chip called it, hit it at the right time. We got good blocking on the perimeter.

But as you can tell, we've run that a couple of times. I think we ran it against New Mexico. It's been effective. If you're overplaying our pull play with those backers and getting safety support, which they were, you're vulnerable to it. So they consequently went back and played cover two to balance up, and that gave us some softer run opportunities.

Q. Is that one of those situations where Chip has got to have some plays that don't work to defend it so then you can counter them?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I think what you need more than anything else is patience. You're prodding, you're patient, you're waiting for your opportunities to kind of unfold. If you just say I'm going to give up on the running game here in the third quarter, you're not going to have those opportunities later, and we got in a lot of that -- the bang for the buck, if you will, in the fourth quarter by the things that we did earlier, and they showed themselves because he was patient with the running game.

Q. Big picture, the maturity of the team that you needed to see coming out of Georgia, do you feel like you've seen it more and more every week?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, they're not too high, they're not too low. At halftime they knew that they had to play for four quarters. There was no giddiness of, hey, we've got this thing. They knew that USC, they had bite to them. This team had a bite. This was not a team -- look, I mean, I have a great deal of respect for USC and its tradition and in particular for clay, but this team has some fight to it, and you could feel that out there, and our kids can, too.

When you're down on the field you know if a team has got some fight in them. They had some fight, and they could feel that at halftime that they were going to have to play four quarters.

Q. You gave a couple different looks defensively, three down, you bring drew white in, did some different things on the back end. Can you give us an idea of what you were trying to accomplish --
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I think we accomplished what we wanted to. Pittman, four catches for 29 yards. I mean, that was first and foremost. He could not be a game wrecker.

You know, St. Brown, we were in the right coverage on his touchdown. We needed to be in better leverage. That's one where we needed to execute better in that situation. But number one was to take Pittman out of the game, which we did, and I thought in the first half we executed exactly the way I wanted to defensively. In the second half we give up the touchdown that we didn't execute very well. The second drive we got caught in some man situations where we've got to make a play in some man. And then the third drive we were trying to take time off the clock. I mean, we were in a prevent kind of situation to take clock and just get the onside kick and end the game.

Q. And then offensively you talked during the week about how talented you thought USC was up front, individually at least. To rush for 306 yards against that group, how did you accomplish that?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, look, I mean, I could stand up here and BS you guys all day and tell you we're the second coming of the Green Bay Packers rushing attack. But they were in two deep, so they didn't want us to throw the football. They didn't like the match-up early. You saw it. We got a one-on-one match-up early and we took advantage of it because they went man and they pressured us. They must have said, that's not going to be the way this game goes. They went two deep and they gave us some box looks to run the football. We have to be able to offensively, if you're going to play two deep, we've got to run the football. If we can't, we're not good enough. If you're going to play man and pressure us and load the box, it's hard to run the football, we'd better be able to throw the football, and that effectively is what happened. We had fair numbers to run the football today, and that's how we won the football game.

Q. As you changed all those defensive personnels, Asmar stayed on the field, I don't know if you would have expected that six weeks ago and tonight he leads with 11 tackles. What showed tonight in how much he's developed in the last two months?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, he closes really well. If you look at it, his experience in playing football, we kind of like his sense around the line of scrimmage. You know, he's -- he can fit a broad spectrum on that -- what was a loose box for us. We were a gap short most of the day. So we like the ability of him to run things down for us. And he's pretty good with a rolled up corner on the backside as a curl player.

So just getting another athlete on the field, we just kind of like his experience, and did a nice job for us tonight.

Q. I think we can all agree that you have a pretty good kicker. When did you know you had a good kicker? Was it last spring? Was it this fall? Was it tonight?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, there's two things here, right. So we knew the physical capabilities of our kicker when we recruited him. We thought he had an exceptional leg, and he was a talent. But there's more to it, right? Again, poor analogy, but he could drive the golf ball 350 yards but he'd be in the trees half the time. So it was about how do we get this young man to really hone in on this exceptional skill that he has. And you know, he's done an incredible job of really building a repetition in his swing, his leg swing, that he is so confident now in what he does that he's unflappable. He can go into any situation and he trusts what he is doing, and it's like anything else, when you go on that first tee and you trust your swing, you feel like you can hit it no matter what the situation is. He's in a similar kind of state now.

He wasn't there. Listen, if you were here last year, I mean, we had some interesting conversations on the sideline. So he's done a great job of putting himself in the position -- he got the game ball tonight, and it's just great to see that maturation.

Q. Did that maturation really start in the spring? Did you know in the spring he was hitting with that consistency?
BRIAN KELLY: We saw the development because he chose to address it. Now, you can just say -- you can blame it on a million things, and I'm not getting treated right or I'm not getting a fair shake, you're too hard on me. That was not his mindset. His mindset is I've got to do better. I'm a better kicker than this. I'm going to find a way to make sure that I am repeating this, and I'm going to be the kind of kicker I think I should be, and all the credit goes to him.

Q. Going kind of off of the Doerer talk, what can you say about the way special teams has improved this season in general?
BRIAN KELLY: Well, I think Brian has done an outstanding job, quite frankly. I think his approach has had a lot to do with it, and his approach has been one where he has garnered the support of the group in a manner that he's a warm and fuzzy guy, and I would never have said that about Brian Polian. And the warm and fuzzy has been one that the guys enjoy coming to the meetings. They enjoy playing for him. They want to play for him.

He was a hard charger, and you know, there was a bit of an edge to him, and there still is an edge to him. Believe me, I've got to pull him back half the time. But they want to play for Brian. And good for him. He's really done a nice job of developing that unit to where those guys want to run down on a kickoff team and they want to make tackles because they have an immense amount of pride for that unit, and he's built that and instilled it. A lot of credit goes to him.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297