Brian Kelly Once Again Defends Brian VanGorder

For the second time this season, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly had to defend his defensive coordinator following a loss.

Third-year defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder is under fire once again, and a day after a 36-28 loss to Michigan State in which the defense allowed 501 yards, Kelly went to bat for his much maligned DC.

“Absolutely. Without question,” Kelly said when asked if he’s confident VanGorder is the right man to run the defense. “That’s not even part of the conversation.”

Like he did in his postgame address to the media Saturday, Kelly highlighted Notre Dame’s lack of fundamentals and overall sloppy play on defense.

Big plays. Fitting plays. Fundamentals. Being “out of control” when tackling. Those were all things Kelly listed as problem areas for the defense during the conference call, which focused almost solely on the defense.

“All those things are a product of coaching and communication and teaching,” Kelly said. “We’ve got to coach better, we’ve got to teach better, we’ve got to communicate better and we’ve got to put our kids in a position where they’re able to execute what we ask them to execute.

“(On the players end), they’ve got to make plays when they’re put in that position as well. A lot of the responsibility is on us to continue to teach, continue to communicate and that’s what coaching is about. We’ll get back to work on that.

“This is not rocket science what we’re talking about here. These are plays that we’ve got to continue to work on and fundamentally get better at. That’s why there’s not a question about scheme, there’s not a question about who’s leading it with Brian, this is about coaching, communicating and teaching the fundamentals and getting our young players, those that don’t have a lot of experience, better at execution.”

The Irish hosted 50-plus recruits for the primetime matchup, but Kelly said he was asked by just one prospect how he plans on fixing the defense. There’s no quick fix for a defensive unit that is ranked 102nd in the country in total defense (439.3 yards per game allowed), 99th in rushing defense (198.67 ypg), 84th in passing defense (240.7) and 94th in scoring defense (32 ppg).

“Any guy that we put on the field now is a true freshman. We’re playing true freshmen,” Kelly said. “At this point, it’s a matter of the guys that we have are the guys that we have to continue to work with and develop. Each game becomes an experience that they have to take and learn from and get better from.

“We’re going to be a work in progress and we’re going to work to get this group better each and every week. We hope to be a better football team in November than we are in September.”

Kelly was asked specifically about how he’ll go about “being better coaches.” It starts with being thumb-pointers and not pointing fingers and blaming the problems on others.

“We should look at ourselves and find out what we can do better,” Kelly said. “Maybe somebody needs to be worked a little bit differently maybe from a walkthrough perspective? Maybe somebody is taking too many reps? Maybe they need more film study? It’s our job as coaches to see how we can develop our players more efficiently.

“It’s not, ‘Hey this guy can’t do this or he can’t do that.’ These are the players that we recruited to Notre Dame. These are the players that are going to play for us. It’s our job as coaches to coach them better and get them in a position to make the players necessary for us to be successful.”

It’s not all doom-and-gloom for Notre Dame on defense. The Irish strung together several good defensive series in the fourth quarter to climb back against the Spartans. It’s a lack of consistency and fundamentals, though, that prevents the team from doing that for an entire game.

The Irish are also relying heavily on some freshmen on defense. Devin Studstill started at safety and had an interception. Julian Love saw most of the snaps at nickel and corner. Daelin Hayes and Julian Okwara rotated in on third down packages at defensive end.

“I just think from our perspective, the more that we can get in a number of these younger players, the quicker we're going to evolve to the kind of consistent defensive performances that we all need here,” Kelly said. “That's why, from my perspective, I look at it a little bit differently than maybe everybody else in our fan base, that the sky is falling.”

At linebacker, Kelly said Nyles Morgan and James Onwualu at Mike and Sam, respectively, have been “really solid.” It’s the Will linebacker spot with Greer Martini and Te’von Coney, that has seen the most issues.

Kelly said he sees the potential for those players in practice, but needs to see the consistency from them in the game.

“That's caused us some problems. It caused us some problems last night,” Kelly said of the Will position. “In our two losses, that position has been an issue for us. We're struggling right there trying to get consistency out of that position.”

It comes down to "consistency of performance" from the defense in the third year under VanGorder.

"We'll have some streaks of really good play, and then we won't be in a gap or we won't be fitting a play correctly after," Kelly said. "That's why I put it back on the communication, the teaching, the experience that's gained from one week to the next. It's got to be able to be carried over from week-to-week."

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