Georgia Has Notre Dame's Full Attention
No. 7 Notre Dame traveling to No. 3 Georgia has been talked about to death for the last nine months, but now that game week is finally here, Fighting Irish fans seem like they couldn’t be less excited for the top ten showdown.
It’s a little puzzling, but Notre Dame will still travel to Athens to meet a very talented Georgia team as head coach Brian Kelly stated on Monday afternoon.
“The competition that we're playing this weekend will certainly require us to play our very best,” stated Kelly. “Kirby Smart and the Georgia program are synonymous with winning, being successful and we're quite aware of that. We played them a couple of years ago in a hard-fought game which we came up short.”
Notre Dame fell 20-19 at home to Georgia in 2017, which was the first career start for quarterback Jake Fromm. The performance by the then true freshman caught Kelly’s eye.
“Jake Fromm obviously played as a freshman against us,” Kelly said. “Showed great poise and has continued to develop into being one of the premier quarterbacks in college football, throwing the ball at 75% completion percentage. He's an outstanding player, making all the throws and plays with great confidence. He has a great offensive line.”
Fromm completed 207-of-307 passes for 2,761 yards, 30 touchdowns and six interceptions last fall. Through three games in 2019, he has completed 42-of-56 passes for 601 yard and five touchdowns.
The efficiency is one thing, but it’s the whole package that makes Fromm elite in Kelly’s eyes.
“The quarterback,” stated Kelly. “He's efficient. He's unflappable. You can pressure him and he doesn't panic. He makes great decisions. He's sound with the ball.
“When you get down to the really great teams, you're going to get Trevor Lawrence. You're going to get the great quarterbacks that are the reason why they start to separate. Fromm is one of those guys that gets you to start to separate.”
Notre Dame isn’t going to just roll over to Fromm despite the words from Kelly and it will start with getting home on third down on Saturday night. The Irish didn’t record a sack against New Mexico, but Kelly was very pleased with what his defensive line did over the first two weeks of the season when it comes to disrupting the quarterback.
“They're doing a great job,” explained Kelly. “The ball comes out so fast. It’s most of the time under two seconds where the ball is coming out both against Louisville and New Mexico.
“We just got to clean up some of the penalties on the perimeter, but we're getting exactly what we want in terms of pressuring the quarterback and making them get the ball out of his hands quickly. Those guys are doing a nice job for us.”
Defensive end Julian Okwara mentioned he enjoyed the new sound system the most in the new indoor facility and it will be put to the test this week as Kelly plans to make it as loud as possible on his team during the week of practice.
Practicing with noise might help, but at the end of the day, Notre Dame has been preparing for tough road environments all offseason and Director of Football Performance Matt Balis and Kelly designed the offseason program exactly for nights like Saturday in Athens.
“I have done it other times in my career,” Kelly said of the ‘Road Warrior’ emphasis. “Matt and I sit down. We plan out the themes that we want in the spring. We set it to an overall theme in terms of how we set that workout up. There is a video, there's a presentation and it is really to build the mindset whether it is protecting the house that we play in, that mentality, or going on the road.
“Those are important elements within the entire year. Being on the road, being able to build that mindset is really what this has been about and certainly, we'll need that again this week against Georgia.”
The offseason program will have a chance to show itself this weekend, but it will also be about dialing in during the week to prepare the right way to execute at a high level on Saturday.
“The most important thing will be how we prepare,” said Kelly. “It will be in our preparation. If we do a great job preparing, we can go play the game, play fast, play free and then the best team wins.
“It will be in our preparation. It won't be because the crowd was loud or that it was hot. It will be because they executed better than we executed. So at the end of the day, it is still about our preparation and how we execute.”