Brian Kelly Notebook | 8.8
Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly spoke to Jack Nolan following the first day in full pads.
On the first day in full pads:
“We crafted a plan today to put our players in a position to be evaluated. Each day is about evaluating parts of your football team. When you get into an 11 on 11 situation, you want to see the culmination of it and that's full tackle live situations. Now, of course, the quarterbacks aren't live. So I'd say probably Julian Okwara, Khalid Kareem and those guys would like to know if they had more sacks than I actually gave them today but by and large, this is what we're looking for today.
“We got some action tackling, guys running to the football and tempo. You can't duplicate it. I know Coach Balis did a great job of getting our team in shape, but football and playing the game and getting lined up and all of those things that go with it. We needed to do this today. So it was a good day.”
On positions that have stood out at Culver:
“Seeing our quarterback play and the depth at safety. There's no question we've got more than than one or two options at tight end. The running back depth is outstanding. We talked about it yesterday, Phil Jurkovec continues to work on the mechanics at the quarterback position, and he's getting better every day. So all the things that we needed to see developmentally.
“Ian Book has a great grasp and control of our offense. We needed to see some receivers step up. After five days, a lot of positive things and a lot of things that we have to continue to work on, but if you asked me five days ago, where we stand, I feel pretty good about where we are.”
On building team chemistry:
“They recognize the standard is about having a team that will pull for each other and that they need them together. In other words, there's a standard that they hold each other to but they got to go out here and work and compete against each other and it can't be fractionalized. It can't be one where they're divisive, and they get that they understand how important it is to be one and to be really good teammates.”
On what the off day on Friday means for the team:
“We've got some important things. We will vote for captains tomorrow. We get some meetings will talk about some things that we need to do in special teams. Some installation, so there's a lot of work to do off the field and get the guys a chance to recover. They'll be treatments, Rob Hunt, and his staff will be fully taxed tomorrow. So a lot of work tomorrow, even though we're not on the field and then we'll get back to it on Saturday.”
On the next two weeks of fall camp:
“We've gotten a lot of the questions out of the way and now it's time to look at the guys that we need to rep in certain situations and start to look at who the guys that we've got to get ready. As we sharpen things up for Louisville. We got a pretty good look in these five days of the guys that got to get the reps necessary to get ready for Louisville.”
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