Brian Kelly, Notre Dame Not Looking To Make Significant Changes

If you’re waiting for Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly to say publicly that this 3-6 season is going to result in him making massive overhauls for next season, think again.

The 28-27 loss to Navy this weekend is not what he or anyone else on the staff wanted, but he remains optimistic that the Fighting Irish will be a far better team in 2017 with this year’s experiences.

“It’s hard for me to want to make any significant changes,” Kelly said during his Sunday teleconference. “I know we lost the football game, and the first thing is to look to make some changes. But we’ve got a lot of inexperienced players that are gaining great experience.

“We’re still growing up, and I love the way we compete and play hard. We’ve lost six close games [by a total of 29 points] that easily could have went our way, and we’re going to keep battling and fighting.”

The theme is pretty simple: Do what you do better instead of grab-bagging for different solutions. The setbacks this season will serve as vital lessons in 2017.

“It’s hard for me in these circumstances to think that major changes need to be made, other than continue to do what we’re doing, and we’ll break through,” he said. “We have so many guys that are going to be learning how to do the things right every single day this year. And they are doing that. … We need a little bit better coaching, we need a little bit better playing in certain areas.

“That’s going to obviously prove to be very, very important for us in the next year and the next coming years. My focus is on the present, but everything that we do is going to benefit us in the future as well.”

With 55 of the top 61 players on the current depth chart having at least another year of eligibility in 2017 — although it’s unlikely all will be back — Kelly said there is much to look forward to.

“If we’re losing 31-0 — then changes are made or you’re playing younger players, and that’s how you handle those situations,” Kelly said. “But when you know that your nucleus is maturing and getting better and is going to be the group that you’re playing next year, you’re just working on the finer details during the course of the year and during the course of your preparation.”

Jarron Jones Explanation

One week after a dominant performance with six tackles for loss in a win against Miami that earned nose guard Jarron Jones the Nagurski National Defensive Player of the Week honors, the fifth-year senior was virtually AWOL versus Navy’s triple option.

The explanation by Kelly was puzzling.

“It really is a whole different animal relative to option,” Kelly said. “He’s got a job to do, and he can’t be the kind of force he was in a traditional offensive set because he’s got to play gap and he has a responsibility. If they choose to run triple option, even if he’s a force and he’s destroying his guy and he’s getting upfield, they are going to pull the ball and work the ball out to the perimeter.

“So you could take a Jarron Jones out of the game, even if he’s being disruptive, and so it really neutralizes players like him and when you play a team like Navy.”

If that’s the case, then Jones might be absent again this week against another triple-option foe in Army.

News & Notes

• Junior safety Drue Tranquill and freshman cornerback Julian Love will go through concussion protocol this week after sustaining hits to the head against Navy that sidelined them in the second half.

• The penalty for 12 men on the field in the third quarter on a Navy punt that helped set up the Midshipmen’s go-ahead touchdown rankled Kelly, and he wishes there would be a more nationalized rule to reviewing replays instead of by just conference.

“We’re the only sport that doesn't have that, so I hope that affects some form of conversation that we can get to a nationalized replay situation,” he said.

Notre Dame was lined up in a “safe punt” situation, which meant its base defense was in to protect against a fake punt.

“So you’re keeping your defense out there till the very last second and [Navy] raced their team out there quickly and we should have obviously not cut it as close as we did,” Kelly said.

• The Irish head coach also had no misgivings about kicking a 31-yard field goal to cut the score to 28-27 with 7:28 remaining in the game instead of going for it on fourth-and-four from the Navy 14.

“I kicked into the wind in the third quarter for a reason — and that was to take the wind in the fourth quarter with a thought that the field goal would win the game in the fourth quarter,” Kelly said. “We had many chances to get off the field. We had third-and-nines, third-and-sevens, fourth-and-sixth — we had our own chance to pick up a first down on the offensive side of the ball.

“They are easily disputed, but I think it was the right call to make it 28-27 with a field goal and the wind to your back to win the game in the kind of game that we played.”

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