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UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 2, 2019Brian KellySouth Bend, Indiana Notre Dame - 21, Virginia Tech - 20 BRIAN KELLY: Again, happy for those guys. They again found a way to win a football game, which is very difficult, especially the way they did it. Going in right before the half to seemingly take a, I don't want to say control of the game, but have it well in hand in the sense that it's going to be difficult for them to mount an offensive charge for the way we're playing defensively, and of course they go 90-something yards on a fumble return. So that's difficult, but our guys responded, we got them back together at halftime, told them they got to continue to fight, continue to persevere. They did that. Those are all character traits that we're looking for that we needed to see on display. We saw them and really happy for them, proud of the guys and excited about the win. So with that, open up for questions. Q. You said this week you wanted to see your team play to the standard that they didn't a week ago. Did you do that today and if you did do it, is that a yes regardless of what happens in the final minute of this game? BRIAN KELLY: Kind of, yeah. Yeah, they played hard, they played physical. There was -- obviously we didn't execute offensively as well as we would have liked, but I saw the passion, the desire. And you might say, well, you should have that all the time. But the fact of the matter is there's a standard that we have, we didn't live up to that standard and the challenge was to come back and play to that standard. They did. Now, the game of football is more than that. It requires execution and we did not have that at times. We were overcoming a very difficult situation with the fumble. But all the other traits were definitely on display today. Q. Do you need today to be a pivotal moment for your season going forward? BRIAN KELLY: No, but I think it's a great start. I think we can build off of this. I think Ian Book can have a lot of great things happen for him. He was back to throwing the football with much more authority, confidence. That was, I don't know 16-play, 17-play, 17-, 18-play drive. When you're dropping eight and there's eight guys in coverage. Did a great job. He hasn't done that in his career here. So that's a first for him. He can build off that have. I think defensively the ability to stop the run today was absolutely crucial. I think Coach Fuente is almost .850 winning percentage when they rush for over 150 yards and 200 in particular. So that was the game plan and they did a very good job controlling the line of scrimmage. Q. Could you see the extra point at the end and the snap was kind of low. It looks like Bramblett made a pretty good hold? BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, it was a low snap. It was a low snap. You know, at that point you don't know what's going to happen. You're just moving on to the next play. But Jay did great job getting the ball down for John and John connected on it. Q. How do you feel like Ian handled the week, the noise that went with it? BRIAN KELLY: I mean, if you played for the New York Giants he wouldn't get as much that went on around here. I mean, it was way overblown. It was, Notre Dame, for him, is so important and Notre Dame means so much to him, and being the quarterback here, that he handled it so well. He came in my office on Sunday, Monday. And I thought did he some things this week in practice that allowed us to reach some areas that we hadn't been able to reach before and I thought we saw signs of it and I think he's only going to get better from it. Q. At what point in the week do you feel like, okay, my quarterback is actually processing this okay, like, this is not tearing him down? BRIAN KELLY: Well, I think all week -- they played a little tight today. I don't know if you guys saw that, but we played a little tight today. And that was all of -- look, they try not to hear the noise, but when the noise is so loud it affects 18- to 21-year-olds and it affected them a little bit. But they fought through it, they showed grit and he did as well and I'm proud of him. I couldn't be more happy for those guys because they had to do it today. They weren't going to get help from anybody. Anybody. And they found way to win. Q. Trevor Ruhland mentioned to us that he has a knee of an 80-year-old and then he listed all his surgeries. And he said he probably shouldn't be playing, but what does it mean to have him back here playing? BRIAN KELLY: Well, Trevor is so well liked by his teammates because he loves Notre Dame. I mean, look, the theme here is these guys love playing for Notre Dame. They love what the standards are and what it stands for. And Trevor Ruhland could have easily taken a pass on this and said, I'm out. But he loves his teammates, he loves playing for Notre Dame and what he did is we thought he was going to be a medical red shirt, quite frankly. We thought that there was no way. If you asked our training staff, and I don't think I'm putting any words in their mouth, they didn't think that he was going to make it through the summer. But he wanted to play in his senior year, it was important to him. So it's great to see him have some success. Q. With the kind of pop-up fumble by Jafar before the half, it looked like you went right back to him very early in the second half. What gave you the confidence to do that and do you feel like you saw some glimpses of what he might be able to be for you in this offense? BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I mean, it's his first, really, game, right. I mean, he played last week, but he was so tentative. I mean, if you guys watched him at all, he caught a kick off and looked like, you know, he didn't know where to go. So this was really his first game back. So, yeah, we saw some really good things today with Jafar Armstrong back in for the first time. And, yeah, you got to go back to him. He's going to mean too much to our offense. We're out, Tony Jones is out, he's a veteran presence for us that would settle us down, he wasn't in there. Of course you lose your captain early on in the game, he wasn't there. But they overcame it and that's, to me, I couldn't be more happy for those guys. Q. You spoke about the character of the players, talked about the resilience. What do you attribute that to and how do you kind of make sure those qualities continue to manifest themselves down the stretch? BRIAN KELLY: That's a great question. Well, I think that a lot of them come to Notre Dame with an understanding of one of the things that they need to be successful here, both in the classroom and on the football field. And then within the football program is we try to build on those traits every single day. It's never a finish line. It's a journey. There's no destination as it comes to building character with your football team. And they're life lessons, right? They got knocked down last week, humbled, if you will. And this week they come back and they have to fight for their lives, in a sense, to come up with a victory. So it teaches them a lot about how important it is to have great focus and accountability and all the great life lessons that we all teach. I teach it as a parent, you probably taught as parents, that you can take with you when you leave here. So that's an ongoing process. Q. How much of a safety net is a player like Chase Claypool, especially on a drive like that where you got to go 87 yards in three minutes? BRIAN KELLY: Well, you know, Chase, look, those are the guys that got to step up in those periods, right, on those drives. We got to find Chase and we got to get him the football and we did and he stepped up big. Players make plays. Great players make them during times when you need it the most. He showed himself as a great player because of the time and the circumstances and he's got such a high competitive nature to him that, you know, he always wants the football and I kind of like that. Q. And then how crucial was it to hold Virginia Tech to field goals on those two drives they had, the scoring drives in the second half, to not let them get in the end zone and let the deficit get any higher than it was? BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, certainly. Our defense did a really good job today. I think Clark and the staff had a great plan. As you saw, very little nickel. We had played with five defensive linemen, prepared for runs on third down. It's really a game that you don't see it much, right? Third and four to seven was a rundown. So we were man-to-man, I think our corners -- look, they gave up some plays, but they were on an island all day. And Pride and Vaughn, look, they battled, they hung in there, and at the end of the day they did what we asked them to do in this game plan and they held up for us. Q. You mentioned they played tight. For most of the game that led to some offensive stumbling. What changed in that final drive? Was it just urgency or did something else shift? BRIAN KELLY: Well I think we started tight. I think that the turnovers kind of contributed to that. Everybody now is kind of, like, I don't want to make a mistake, instead of just be who you are, keep playing, be aggressive. So it's a little bit of both. But I think the time, the moment, the sense of urgency, the need to kind of go play, they all knew that this was their last chance at winning the football game. The defense had set them up enough and they had to find a way. I was in the huddle and I said, look, this is what these moments are about. You'll come back to this, people are going to look at the win and go, Notre Dame won 21-20, wow, that's ridiculous. We look at it as a great victory and we really don't care what anybody else says. That moment in that huddle is so indicative of what they needed to do. I just thought that Chase and Ian and the offensive line, they all looked at each other and said, we're going to find a way to get this ball in the end zone. Q. Aside from maybe the Citrus Bowl a few years back, I don't know that Ian has had that moment at the end of a game. What did you see in him at that moment that you didn't know you had? BRIAN KELLY: It's like anything else, we're calling plays and we're doing this all year, right, two minute. I don't know that we have scored against our defense all year in two minute, quite frankly. So this, this was the first time Ian scored in a two-minute drive. So hats off to him. And dropping eight is difficult to find lanes. He found it. And that's why I said, in many respects this is a great building block for him moving forward. Q. Hainsey's status, first of all? BRIAN KELLY: Looks like a fractured ankle. Q. I know normally you allow Chip Long to call his plays. I wondered if you, or what your input was on the design run for Book and what your thoughts were? If you weren't involved in making that decision, what your thoughts were to that. BRIAN KELLY: I wanted something that would give us both the look -- they went bracket and then they went man. So bracket is a zone, doubled-out zone. I wanted our combination play that gave us the look, that if we got one-on-one, we would get Claypool one-on-one on the corner route from the No. 3 position. And if they went bracket, he could run the ball. And so just wanted a combination, because we already got a glimpse of what we were getting down there. We got bracket one time, we got man the other. So it was just give me a combination call. Q. You talked about the noise that Ian Book hears. Obviously, you're hearing it too, you've had a lot more practice at it -- BRIAN KELLY: I'm much thicker skin. Q. But how does it impact you? You heard it during the week, obviously. BRIAN KELLY: No, it doesn't impact me at all, quite frankly. I think it affects my family and my kids and -- adversely, but I just try to manage it with them. But we have done a really good job of staying focused on what's important and that's our players and developing them and making sure that they get back and play this game the way they need to play it and that's all I wanted to do was get them playing the way that we needed to play this weak and they did. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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