Notre Dame QB Ian Book Pleased to See Offense Clicking
Notre Dame started the season with three three-and-outs against Duke.
Brian Kelly and quarterback Ian Book made sure that changed on Saturday as the Fighting Irish scored 35 points in the first half against South Florida.
"That's what we focused on all week," stated Book. "The coaches did a great job of bringing that up early in the week, that we want to start fast and we didn't do that last week, so it was really important to focus on that this week. We did it all through practice.
"Part of that is a mindset and then part of that is just focusing and attention to detail, and going out there and executing. I thought we did a great job of that tonight. We started fast like we wanted to and that's how we got start every game."
Now, South Florida is far from Clemson, so the 52-0 win is expected from a program looking to get back to the College Football Playoff.
And to do that, the game plan was simple.
"We wanted to win the one on one matchup," said Book. "We knew they might come down and press and play man on third down. We wanted to win that and then we wanted to just win the line of scrimmage and do that by running the ball. That's one thing we did today and that opens up the whole playbook once you do that."
Notre Dame rushed for 281 yards led by junior C'Bo Flemister's 127 yards on just 13 carries while freshman Chris Tyree added 65 and sophomore Kyren Williams had 62.
Yet, the blocking from the tight end position received almost as much praise as the backs did on Saturday.
"All those guys are really good at different things," Book said of the tight end group. "Having (Tommy) Tremble out there and Brock (Wright) and Michael Mayer, and all those guys, it just allows us to open up our playbook more. We can run different formations with them and there's just a lot of things that we can do with it.
"To me, it's great. Get those guys who can all run back and who can also go downfield and make a play and make a catch. That's huge for me. It's a confidence builder for myself and I love it."
Book also wanted to improve on the easy throws he missed in the season opener as Kelly said he might have been a little too excited to play football in game one.
"I focused on that all week and I don't need to make any superhero efforts," Book stated. "Just get the ball to all of our playmakers on the perimeter and let our running backs do what they have done for the last two weeks. I didn't need to bring any big pressure on myself. Just do what I can do. I focused on that all week. I felt like I did that today, so I'm happy with it."
It's a long season (we hope), but Notre Dame's offense has started to show signs of being dangerous over the last seven quarters and Book wants to keep it going.
"It feels great," said Book. "It just builds confidence and when we can start fast and play like that with tempo, we're a really good offense. It felt good to have it start clicking."