Okay, people -- who’s ready to turn the corner from bickering about a quarterback controversy that only exists in the hearts and minds of Irish fans? (This guy!)
While there will be plenty of time for us to keep picking away at the play behind center, Brian Kelly and the Irish continued to trudge forward, sitting at 2-2 and ready to tackle their third Big Ten opponent of the season, the Purdue Boilermakers.
Here’s a sampling of what Kelly had to say this afternoon. As usual, I’ll give some thoughts below:
If you were looking for the money quote on Tommy Rees, Kelly delivered it late in the press conference:
“You can put together an incredible highlight reel with Tommy Rees this year,” Kelly said about his starting quarterback. “And you could also put together a blooper film. So it’s really being able to gain that consistency of play after play after play. And a lot of that is learning and experience, and that’s where we’re at.
“That’s this year. We better not be talking about this stuff next year or there will be another quarterback playing. But he is learning. He’s got -- some of the body of his work is really good and some of it needs great improvement. And he knows that. I know that, and we believe that he’s capable of being more consistent for a longer period of time.”
And there’s the closest thing to Kelly’s response to why he’s rolling with Rees over Crist.
Moving on...
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There’s been a lot of talk about winning ugly this week. Kelly didn’t use those exact words, but he talked about the importance of winning and closing out close games. It was as close to a inside look at Kelly’s philosophy of building a team as we’ve seen in some time.
“I ask our players all the time and we talk about all the little things that you have to do to win. Now when you build your program, then the two things that I’ve always looked for in winning teams, and I think the best example is you take Auburn last year who won the National Championship. I think they had six games that they played where they won late or in overtime or won by just a couple of points. I know on my Cincinnati team where we went 12 and 0, we had a number of games that were decided on the last possession. And the point I’m making is one of the things that I liked about our football team at Pittsburgh is that we showed poise and confidence down the stretch.
“Poise to me is the ability to raise your level of concentration when it’s most needed. That you can’t talk about. You have to go demonstrate that. Confidence is the trust in your teammates that they’re going to do their job so you don’t have to do theirs. And those are hard to get to, and I was really pleased, of all the wins that we’ve had, that was the first time that we exhibited in 2011 poise and confidence because if you look at the Michigan game, we didn’t trust in what we were doing in the end, and consequently, we didn’t do the job necessary to win that football game.”
It isn’t hard to think about past Irish teams (specifically 2008 and 2009), and how when the season started going sideways, Notre Dame couldn’t do anything to stop it. Kelly proved in his first year that he had to ability to pick his team up off of the mat. Unfortunately, it was after the Irish had already lost five games. After digging itself a two game hole, a win on Saturday would give us another data point to examine, and more importantly push the Irish to 3-2 heading into Air Force and the bye week.
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There’s been some grumbling about the play of Will linebackers Dan Fox and Carlo Calabrese after watching them miss some big one-on-one tackles so far this year. But ask Kelly what he’s thought of their play, and it’s a completely different tune.
“Both of them have really done some great things,” Kelly said of the duo. “You know, we got matched up a couple of times one on one with the backs, so it forced us to go to nickel because we didn’t like that matchup. But by and large our will linebacker has been outstanding in pass coverage. Calabrese has had a couple of really good plays in pass coverage for us. Danny’s done a great job. We’ve got some really good plays, especially on his pass coverage from our will linebacker position.”
Part of me wonders if that answer was a bit calculated, if only because it doesn’t pay to have other teams hear you acknowledge you haven’t been getting great linebacker play. That said, both guys have 15 tackles each, and three combined tackles-for-loss. Those 30 tackles would be good for second place on the team -- 11 shy of Manti Te’o and five ahead of Harrison Smith, really just about where you’d want them to be. When you look at it that way, that’s pretty good production from the position, though I think everybody would like to see the missed tackles cleaned up.
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For those wondering if Kelly had plans on playing any more freshman, he let us behind the curtain Tuesday afternoon, where Cam McDaniel, George Atkinson and Davaris Daniels are loosening up.
“I think maybe running back position, you know, we’re ready to give one of those two young guys some work, McDaniel and Atkinson, both of them, you know, we’re really close there,” Kelly said. “Daniels is getting closer each and every week. So I’d say on the offensive side of the ball those would be the three guys most likely.
“Defensively, you know, I think you see the guys that we’re playing right now. I don’t see anybody else hopping in to the lineup or cracking the two deep.”
For those wondering if Kelly would give a guy like Ben Councell or Josh Atkinson a chance to work their way into the rotation it seems like Kelly’s content standing pat with the defensive unit.
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Finally, Kelly had a fascinating exchange where he broke down the thought process of going for the punt block on the first series of the second half. He acknowledged the decision backfired, but also gave some interesting thoughts on the parameters for which he calls for a block. Interestingly enough -- it’s not when the punted is pinned in his endzone.
“We have a yard line that we will not put one on because you only get two points out of it. You know, I don’t want to block a kick for two points,” Kelly revealed. “I’d rather set our offense up at midfield than try and block a kick for two points because if you block it and it goes out of the back of the end zone, obviously, you know, you get the ball back. But we look in all those terms of when do you go for a block and what time do you do it and then in some instances how your defense is playing.”
Kelly said the call wasn’t an in-game adjustment, but rather one they made before hand, after reviewing tape with Mike Elston. Obviously the outcome wasn’t what the Irish wanted and it was a huge momentum changer, but Kelly made it clear that he has a ton of confidence in Austin Collinsworth, one of his best special teams players.
That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a coach explain his logic, and while at first it seemed a little counter intuitive, it makes a ton of sense.