At an impromptu press conference, head coach Brian Kelly gave the CliffsNotes to the state of the Irish union yesterday.
Here’s what he said:
On the quarterback situation:
“We’d be really close to playing with (Dayne Crist). We’re going to be smart. He’ll play all our 7-on-7 routines, he’ll be in all of our one-on-ones. We’ll put a big funnel around him and make sure no one gets near him. We’ve got to rely on Montana to really compete with Crist. He’s got some experience. He bounced around a little bit, he understands what he needs to be. But he’s caught our eye a little bit. He’s going to have to come through for us.”
On the overall discipline of the football team:
“Their attention to detail is not where it needs to be. Their discipline is not where it needs to be. They need to care about themselves and their football players a lot more. I’m tired of hearing about the next NFL player coming out of Notre Dame, quite frankly. They need to understand who we are. We’re creating an atmosphere that’s a little bit different than we’re used to. The positives? They want to win. And they are on board 100 percent. But we’re working through that every single day.”
On the changes at running back:
“We also had to open up space for Cierre Wood. Here’s a guy who was sitting fourth on the depth chart with two seniors, it was going to be hard to get him on the field. We need to get him on the field as well. Moving Theo, we believe he’s got the ability to catch the football at the line of scrimmage and make big plays for us. It gets a Cierre Wood into the football game.”
On the official start of Camp Kelly:
“We started at a level of unconscious incompetence. In other words, we didn’t know that we didn’t know. That was pretty clear. I think our players saw that, too, that there’s so much more that needs to be done for us to be a championship football team.”