Brian Kelly Post-Practice: Day 1
CULVER, Ind. - Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly met with the media after the first day of the team's workouts at Culver Military Academy.
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OPENING STATEMENT: There was certainly a lot of work for our wide receivers and gaining some continuity there. I thought we made some progress. First day is trying to blend the summer conditioning with how you want to push your practice. That balance is tricky. You don’t want to burn them all out today. I thought we pushed them pretty hard today, but you’re climatizing to a lot of things today. First day of football, first day of pads, so I’d say overall I’d say it’s probably what I expected. Some of the young guys looked like they’ll make an easy transition into playing, and then there’s some guys that are veterans that we’re going to have to keep developing.
DID ANYTHING STAND OUT WITH THE RECEIVERS: I think the pieces are there, it’s just going to take some time. There’s enough talent there for us to be successful there offensively with the group that we have, it’s just we got to be careful not to overwork them, make sure we stay injury free, and if we do that in time it’ll work itself out.
ON THE DEFENSIVE BACKS: I think there’s plenty of talent there. Even when we went with our third group, you look out there and just see a different looking group out there of guys that look the part and certainly can move. Very optimistic that we’ll be able to find a group that is going to be able to compete at a high level.
ON EQUANIMEOUS ST. BROWN: Today was a day where we tried to build some consistency in his route running. As I told him, I said, ‘Look, the quarterback will adjust to you if you’re consistent. If your routes are ever changing and we don’t know where you're going to be, that’s going to be a problem.’ Today was really about building a base of consistency for him and I think we can safely say that he’s got the talent necessary to perform at that level. Now he’s got to build on that consistency day in and day out. A good first day of developing some I think what I would consider some musts that he has to do, and we’ll build off it today.
ON THE QUARTERBACKS: It’s pretty much what I had thought. They are a little bit different in what we want to do with them, and that continues. We saw Malik (Zaire) on a breakdown throw a great ball over the middle off a broken play. (DeShone) Kizer dumped the ball down off of his third check. They continue to be who we thought they would be. I think we just continue to plow forward and continue to keep them sharp and continue developing who they are.
HOW DO YOU ULTIMATELY CHOOSE A QB: What we’ll probably do is let them keep competing until we have to make a decision, and we don’t have to make a decision until they tell us that only one quarterback can play, and that’s right up to Texas.
ON MAX REDFIELD: How is Max better than the spring? Just one day it’s hard to tell. I think what we want to see from Max is probably just that guy that does the basic things right. He was a guy that was up and down. We saw great flashes and then we didn’t see him for a couple weeks. If we just get consistently played from him we’re going to get really good play. If we went through five days here and we saw a consistent performer, I’d be pretty happy with that. It would be hard for me to say after one day, even if he had a really good day, you’d have to ask me on Day 3, and if you come back to me on Day 3 and he put three really good days together, I would say Max is a different player than he was in the spring.
ON CULVER: The accommodations are really good. In terms of facilities for meetings for our guys to relax a little bit, get away from campus. If they get on campus in June, and obviously the facilities are great at Notre Dame, but it breaks it up a little bit. It gets them focused on just football, they don’t have to think about Notre Dame and all that goes with the rigors of Notre Dame at times. It’s really just a break mentally almost here. In a way they’re off campus, I think that this is much more relaxing and gets them focused just on football.
ON THE RUNNING BACKS: I was impressed with Tony Jones today. Dexter (Williams) had stomach problems today, we had to IV him. He was sick, I guess he wasn’t forthright with us with his illness. Got sick and we had to take him off the field. Tony did a really good job, I was impressed. Matter of fact, Coach (Mike) Denbrock called him ‘Dexter’ twice, and I think that’s a compliment obviously for a true freshman to impress at that level. I was impressed with him, he caught the ball out of the backfield well, he was confident in what he was doing back there. If there was one freshman that jumped in there offensively and looked confident in what he was doing, it was certainly Tony.
ON TAREAN FOLSTON: He wanted to put on a little more weight, he felt like he was too light last year. He’s that elusive, smooth inside-out runner and he’s certainly going to be an effective player for us.
ON JOSH ADAMS: He cramped up. Little bit dehydrated, so we’ll get some fluids in him.
ON JARRON JONES: 25 to 35 plays is a pretty good number for a big guy like that. If he can give us explosive plays at that number, along with Daniel Cage. They’re going to be key plays from us (from Jones). That’s a good place to start, and anything more than that we’ll be very happy. Those are going to be impactful plays when he’s in there.
ON THE OFFENSIVE LINE BATTLES: Days like today are insightful. Every day that you’re out here — the offensive line is one that requires five guys working together. You want to see that in unison kind of work, and if there’s somebody struggling with working together with the five, that would stand out today. Unmistakably today is a day of evaluation too on the offensive line. There are some other position groups maybe not so much that the pads mean more, but today on the offensive line that means a lot.
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