Brian Kelly's Sunday Notre Dame Notebook
College football can be a volatile enterprise for its players and coaches.
After allowing only 11.7 points per game during its 9-0 start, No. 1-ranked Georgia was walloped 40-17 while allowing nearly 500 yards at Auburn, with a late Bulldogs score making it look more respectable.
Following an inexplicable 55-24 loss at unranked Iowa last week, Ohio State responded with an equally head scratching 48-3 romp versus No. 12 Michigan State.
One week after getting pasted 49-14 at Notre Dame, USC went on the road at Arizona State — which had earlier upset unbeaten Washington — and demolished the Sun Devils 48-17.
For Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly, the bitterness of dropping to 8-2 after last night’s 41-8 shellacking at No. 7 Miami to drop to No. 9 in the most recent Associated Press poll is not necessarily the end to what the preseason objective was. There is still plenty to play for, including a Big Six bowl (a win in one would be the first since 1993), a top-10 finish (making it only the third Irish team since 1993 to achieve it) and an 11-2 record, which would join them with the 2012 unit as the only two in the past 24 years not to lose a minimum of three games.
“We really haven't had any specific goals,” Kelly said. “We just have had one mission, and that is to play to a standard, and we didn't live up to that standard last night … a standard of excellence that we've had since day one.
“So we'll go back to applying that standard in everything we do and our preparation and obviously learn from what happened on Saturday night … It's really refocusing on the standard and not worrying about all of those other things that seem to have maybe gotten us off our process.
“It's really how you respond in college athletics. We've got good kids. They really want to win, and I expect them to really come back with a higher standard of play.”
The fact that it was Notre Dame’s first road game in five weeks was not a huge factor to Kelly, noting how the Irish converted a couple of third-down plays on the game’s opening series (including third-and-10) and had an open 35-yard touchdown pass to Equanimeous St. Brown sail just past his fingertips.
“We converted a 3rd-and-10 versus an overload blitz,” Kelly said of the first series. “We communicated well. We need to obviously complete that touchdown opportunity …
“There felt to be a little bit more of pregame energy. I didn't do maybe my best work at settling our team down. With the moment being so big for so many guys, they used a lot of energy.
“That's the only thing that if I had to do it all over again … When you have a night that doesn't come up like that, you don't expect it. But offensively I didn't feel like the noise or the situation — we didn't execute very well, and we turned it over. That was my biggest concern.”
Moving Forward With Brandon Wimbush
After coming off his best all-around performance with 280 yards passing and 110 rushing versus Wake Forest, the junior quarterback had his worst day as a collegian at Miami, leading to a temporary first-half benching. He missed seven straight passes at one point for a stat line of 2 of 10 for 30 yards and two interceptions, which means the opposition caught as many of his passes as did the Irish (plus Miami dropped two early interception opportunities).
Passes sailed or fluttered into the sod as he finished 10 of 21 for 119 yards, two interceptions and a fumble off back-side pressure, and he also had only 24 yards rushing on 11 attempts while getting sacked five times.
“He obviously didn't perform at the level that he wants to perform at, and then he quite frankly needs to perform at,” Kelly said. “You take this as an opportunity to learn, and more importantly, how your preparation prepares you for these big games. You never like to learn lessons in losses, but I think he gained a lot of understanding of what he needs to do to lead this football team.”
Kelly maintained that the physical identity implemented this year will remain the base operation moving forward.
“The physicality is always going to be what we are going to strive from an offensive perspective, but there's got to be balance,” he said. “Regardless of what offense you run — whether you're spreading it with five wides or running the wing T — turnovers still matter. You've got to protect the football, and we did not do a very good job of protecting the football. That can't get lost in this whole narrative of what kind of offense you're going to run.”
Wimbush and the Irish offense did not turn over the football in his five previous starts, a rarity at any level. However, his completion percentage that remains a modest 51.1 percent in an era when 60 to 65 is a more conceivable standard (predecessor DeShone Kizer was at 60.7 percent in 2015-16) needs appreciable upgrade.
“He knows he's got to be more efficient, more accurate … it can't be this is as good as it gets,” Kelly said. “He's a competitor, but you're going to be forced to throw the football against really good teams. When you're forced, you have to be accurate and you have to have a higher completion percentage. That's something that he's going to have to continue to work at.”
The slow-developing running plays that limited Notre Dame to 109 yards rushing, three times below its average, was attributed to both Miami’s quickness and some reads in the scheme that were missed by the Irish front.
“They were quicker off the ball, where we're supposed to cut off,” Kelly said. “We're reading that backside, and we should have pulled it on a couple of occasions. As a matter of fact, the first play of the game, if it was run again, we would have pulled that because the tackle pulls, the defensive end was in the hip of the tackle. That should have been a pull. We had the tight end coming around. We had a nice play there.
“They were quick off the ball, so give them credit, but we had some reads, as well, that we definitely should have pulled the ball on.”
Injury Update
Kelly said the Irish came out “pretty clean” from the Miami game other than the normal assortment of bumps and bruises.
“Nothing that would have anybody in jeopardy of not playing against Navy,” he said.
Wimbush had no ill-effects from his left-hand injury and was not on the medical report for the trainers, per Kelly.
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