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Brian Kelly: "I’m not real supportive of a 5-7 football team in bowl games.” Said decision would be up to the admin.
— Irish Illustrated (@PeteSampson_) November 20, 2016
With how young this Notre Dame team is, one would think Kelly would take all the extra practices he could get. He doesn’t support the notion of 5-7 teams going to bowl games, which I can respect.
The problem with this scenario is that Notre Dame will actually need to get to 5-7 to be considered, and with the way things are going it doesn’t look like the Irish will get there against USC.
Kelly on reworking play calling: “It's something that we’ll definiutely have to think quite hard on in the off-season, absolutely."
— Irish Illustrated (@PeteSampson_) November 20, 2016
It’s safe to say this season the play calling has been a bit odd, and at times just down right bad. For example, the amount of times Notre Dame has lined up in the shotgun on the one yard line is ridiculous. A lot of things need to change before next season and the play calling is one of them. If Kelly is going to be the coach next season, the play calling this season is something they’ll need to learn from and work on.
Kelly said he’ll definitely interview both inside and outside the staff for the defensive coordinator position.
— BlueandGold.com (@BGInews) November 20, 2016
Greg Hudson and Mike Elston have done a good job running the defense since taking over for Brian VanGorder. With that said, I don’t think Kelly can afford to gamble and stay within the program with this hire. If he’s still the coach next season, he needs to make a splash with this hiring. Kelly needs to bring in a known commodity that can build off the progress the defense has made over the last seven games.
Kelly said Malik Zaire wasn’t aware that the clock would run on the ready-for-play signal at the end.
— BlueandGold.com (@BGInews) November 20, 2016
This is just another indication of how poorly coached this team is. You’d think that before Zaire ran out on the field Kelly or one of the coaches would tell him that the clock would start. You could tell Zaire didn’t know the situation by the way he took his time to snap the ball. At least two or three seconds ticked off before he snapped the ball.
Instead of letting Zaire run a play, they should have had Zaire spike the ball. If that would have been the case, you could have at least let Zaire gather himself or maybe Kizer would have been able to return. That last sequence pretty much summed up the whole season.
Brian Kelly on Kizer non call on helmet to helmet: "It's clear on film that it was a helmet to helmet on a defenseless player."
— Angelo Di Carlo (@angdicarlowndu) November 20, 2016
Not that this missed call cost Notre Dame the game, but it was egregious. I was in the stadium and even seeing it live, I could tell something was wrong about that play. On top of that they didn’t even bother to stop the game and review it. It was just a complete debacle by the refs.
“If we had to do it all over again, we should have thrown the ball more.” – Kelly on Saturday’s offensive approach
— Irish Illustrated (@PeteSampson_) November 20, 2016
Is Brian Kelly trolling all of us? Just like how Kelly said after the game on Saturday, I’m at a loss for words.