Kelly Excited For Stretch Run
Has it been perfect? Nope, it never is.
But the record is perfect and that’s good enough for Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly as his team heads into the bye week at 7-0 following Saturday’s ugly 19-14 win over Pittsburgh.
“Super excited,” Kelly said when asked his thoughts on the season so far during his teleconference on Sunday afternoon. “7-0 with a very difficult schedule, beat three Top-25 teams at the time. Just really proud of our football team in terms of where we are, and we know that we can continue to get better.
“If you asked me 7-0 at the bye week? I'd be extremely pleased and happy, and I'm certainly that as I sit here right now.”
Even when prodded about several missed holding calls against opponents through the first half of the season, Kelly only came across as mildly frustrated, although he did note that he sent in eight plays to the ACC office for review this week, which is about twice as many as usual.
“That's way too many,” he said. “We credit (the front seven) for their work and hard work and harassing the quarterback. Julian (Okwara) had eight harassments on the quarterback. He played even better than we thought after watching the film.
“We just really talk about continuing your effort. There's nothing you can do about it. And then we try to educate the league as much as possible.”
To date, Kelly said the response from the league office has been “a mixed bag.”
“A lot of times we're getting, ‘That should have been called,’” he said. “Other times, ‘It's a gray area call.’ From our end, we think that there's calls out there that maybe aren't going our way. But we're just going to keep playing and not complain about it.”
The bye week will give the Irish a chance to step away from the mental pressures of the game with the end of the week and most of the weekend off, but physically, they’re in pretty good shape, according to Kelly.
Kelly said there were no injuries sustained against Pittsburgh that would prevent anybody from practicing on Monday. He also expects cornerback Troy Pride (ankle) and running back Jafar Armstrong (knee) to be back for the Irish’s next game.
The coaching staff will hit the road recruiting at the end of the week, but will also use this week to do some self-scout.
Notre Dame didn’t get much production out of its running game against Pitt, finishing with just 80 yards on 38 attempts, but that isn’t a major concern of Kelly’s right now.
“I think Pitt's plan was to exert a lot of pressure on the running game, and they left themselves vulnerable in the passing game,” Kelly explained. “Any time you throw it for 80 percent completion, you just have to put more points on the board. That's where we fell short. It wasn't that we fell short in the running game. We took advantage of their aggressiveness in the running game by, again, hitting 80 percent of our passes and having chances to turn some quick game into some big plays.
“Nobody in this building, including myself, is concerned about the lack of a running game. There are some plays that we wish that we executed better, but the way they were configured and the way they wanted to play this game, it was going to make it difficult to have a sustained running game in this game.”
The Irish gave up a 99-yard kickoff return to start the second half against the Panthers and that’s something Kelly and his staff do plan to address in the coming days. Kelly admitted the Irish were hesitant to let Justin Yoon handle both placekicking and kickoff duties against the Panthers because of potential fatigue, but having Yoon kick off instead of Jonathan Doerer seems like a definitely possibility.
“Our placement has been not where it needs to be,” Kelly said of the kickoff issues. “We're not putting the ball where it needs to be. We're kicking it down the middle of the field. We certainly have to be better in our lane distribution and tackling, but it starts with consistency in kicking…We're covering too many plays. We covered seven kickoffs against Virginia Tech. That's crazy. We're capable of kicking it out of the end zone, and we're just not doing it on a consistent basis.
“It starts with our specialists. We've got to be better there, and then certainly finding the guys that can consistently get down there and do the right things. When you put the ball in the middle of the field, you have to adjust a lot of things, and we didn't make some of the adjustments that we needed to.”
Kelly said Yoon would get some rest this week “and then we'll evaluate whether giving him both duties is in our best interest.”
The bye will also give the Irish some extra time to prepare for Navy’s triple-option attack, which they’ll see in their next game, Saturday Oct. 27 in San Diego.
“They've kind of morphed over the last year or so in terms of what they're doing, using multiple quarterbacks, and even this year, working out of the shotgun,” Kelly said of the Midshipmen. “A lot of this is about staying up to date with the kind of changes that they're making from an offensive standpoint.
“We'll go out tomorrow, and the first thing that we'll do is we'll install Navy's base offense, their open sets, their triple, their load plays, and then Tuesday we'll go with some of the new stuff that they've shown over the last couple of weeks.”
The Irish know what’s ahead of them in terms of opportunities and obstacles. If they can win out against Navy, Northwestern, Florida State, Syracuse and USC, they’ll virtually assure themselves a spot in the College Football Playoff for the first time.
It’s a challenge Kelly is looking forward to.
“I like our football team. I think that we've got the parts and the pieces, if all working together, is capable of winning each and every week, but it's going to be a great challenge. I don't know that I have a particular concern…you've got to stay healthy, right. You've got to continue to grow and do all those things. But just keep playing, keep preparing the right way, have a great attitude, and let's go see how this thing plays out.”