Brian Kelly Transcript: Sept. 27
Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly met with the media for his weekly Thursday press conference following practice.
Check out all of what Kelly said.
Q: Have you decided on your starter for Saturday?
BRIAN KELLY: “I think it’s going to be something like this. We’ve prepared both quarterbacks. They are both ready to play. We think that it’s in our best interest to have them both ready. They’ll be ready.”
Q: What impresses you about KJ Costello?
KELLY: “I think it starts with he’s gritty. Grit is, for me, sustained effort over a long period of time even though you have some ups and downs. He’s not perfect. No one is perfect. He’ll have a couple plays that maybe don’t go his way, but he hangs in there. Regardless of what the situation is, he keeps playing and makes plays. He gets his team back into the game. Grit would be the first thing that stands out to me. Then he can fit balls into tight windows. Oregon was in pretty good coverage late in the game, and he was able to fit the ball into tight windows. Just grit and moxie. He has a good character set to help his team win.”
Q: Helps he has good size at receiver to throw it to.
KELLY: “There’s no question. That’s what makes them very difficult to defend with the size. They’re very smart and savvy receivers. They know how to control themselves playing for the football. They’re certainly a challenge.”
Q: Another QB question, with a guy like Phil Jurkovec. How do you measure him being up with the varsity and not having any reps. Versus doing scout team and getting a lot of reps and maybe not learning the Notre Dame offense.
KELLY: “What you have to do is look at how he handles himself the control and command of running that offense. He still has to be controlling it with cadence and making sure guys line up right and throwing the football. It’s not about a bums rush there where we can’t hold up and that defensive line is hitting him every down. There’s a halo around him too. There’s a red shirt on him too. He’s out there throwing the ball, so you can evaluate his accuracy. You can evaluate his ability to put the ball on the receivers. We want to finish the play for our defensive backs, linebackers and safeties.
"I’m able to watch his film every day and sit down and talk to him about things we like and want to continue to work on. I don’t want to paint a picture that he’s not working on the skill development of the quarterback. He’s just not working on a specific game plan from week-to-week. If we had a week with them, we would be able to game plan an offensive structure for him. We don’t have him for that. He’s still developing his skills as a quarterback.”
Q: You’ve outscored your opponents 38-6 in the first quarter. What do you feel are the reasons for that?
KELLY: “There’s been years where we’ve looked at how great we’ve been in the fourth quarter, but haven’t won games and vice versa. I take the football each and every week because I like the percentages of scoring first equals a high percentage of winning football games. We’ve gotten off to good starts. I can’t give you a great answer other than we’ve been really effective in those first drives of games including when Brandon was in the game. We weren’t with Ian, but we scored 56 points. We don’t script plays. Chip Long isn’t a scripter of the first 15 plays and we go off that. It’s been getting into a rhythm. I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
Q: What does it say about your defense because they are coming out sharp as well.
KELLY: “I think that is more of the answer to the question. They’ve played really well as the offense early in the season has not been consistent. I think that’s been the story in the first quarter.”
Q: Kraemer healthy enough to start?
KELLY: “He’s going to play quite a bit. Ruhland you will see in the game as well. We’re getting good play out of Banks as well. We’ll see how much he plays. I feel good about that.”
Q: Kmet back?
KELLY: “Yes, he is. He practiced all week. Had a good week … He’s got great DNA. Sometimes you are very blessed and fortunate. He hasn’t had an ankle injury of any kind before of severity. All of those things clicked in his favor. He looks good running around.”
Q: During the game, the announcers said you mentioned when talking about Ian Book, who hadn’t started a game this year up to that point, you mentioned Baker Mayfield because of the energy he brings and also the Trace McSorley comparison. What prompts you to make those types of comparisons?
KELLY: “Well, size. When you look at them, you go, ‘they aren’t runners of the football.’ Ian Book is a skilled player. One of the things that he does really well is…he can roll out to his left and throw to his left and right. Those are athletic throws he can make under center that are difficult to make. Those guys can do those things as well … I think sometimes we don’t see Ian as athletic … He bounces around. He has an energy to him that injects into the other 10 players. That’s where the comparisons were. They weren’t about who they are as people. I don’t know those two people.”
Q: Shayne Simon was on the travel list, but did not play. Is he a guy maybe you’re saving games there? Is he banged up?
KELLY: “He’s not banged up. I think he’s just in a position where we’re cross-training him at the linebacker position as well … No, he did not get in … Asmar didn’t play as much because we didn’t play much as a rover, so I think it probably cancelled out some of Shayne’s playing time.”
Q: How does Stanford’s pace of play affect your defensive line rotation?
KELLY: “It’s not of the many, kind of, questions that their offense brings to you. It’s probably not even on the list. Wake Forest second in the country [in plays] and Stanford is like 122nd in pace … It’s a huge difference … So, we’ll still rotate in the manner that we have. Guys will get into the game, but it certainly changes. I think they were under 60 plays last week … We’re going to play our top guys. This won’t be a situation where we feel we’ve got to get a guy out just to get him out. We’re going to play our guys … It won’t be a preordained, ‘hey, fourth series you’re out.’ We haven’t played much that way at all.”
Q: When Book is in the game, I’m curious what impact you think it has on your tight ends. Is he just a good match based on skill set?
KELLY: “I think it opens up the kind of passing game that fits the offensive structure. The tight ends have always been part of it. It’s just Ian is someone who is going to find the tight end. He’s been part of it. Those are the kind of throws that he can get the tight ends the ball.”
Q: We’ve seen Julian Love play in all three cornerback spots. Does that challenge the other guys? This seems it could be a game where if someone on Stanford is hot Julian may be the guy who would do well.
KELLY: “I think more than anything else is it allows our guys to compete in practice at a higher level because they see Julian do it. They obviously want to raise their play. I think we’ve had a pretty competitive week. We’ve gone against them quite a bit. We use a lot red zone work with Cole Kmet, Alize, Chase Claypool and Miles Boykin. We have some big boys too. It’s been a competitive week.”
Q: Circling back to freshmen, is there anyone in that group you thought you would initially limit to four then now you say forget the redshirt this year?
KELLY: “I think the only guy on the bubble probably is Joe Wilkins Jr. TaRiq Bracy is probably going to play more than four games. Those two guys probably stand out for me as two that aren’t going the other way. I think they are going to break through that four games sooner than later.”
Q: Wimbush didn’t have a headset during the game. I don’t think Book did when he wasn’t playing. Why wouldn’t you want your backup to be tuned into everything that is being called and shared?
KELLY: “We had a pretty lengthy discussion about it. We want them observing the game, seeing the game, sensing the game and feeling the game. With the headset, there is a lot of chatter going on that is not useful to seeing the game and feeling the game. Tommy Rees feels like he can get the kind of information necessary to those guys and have conversations with them. There were some pros and cons to it. We were looking with the new headset rule, to get them on an earpiece, which could eliminate that chatter. But, they couldn’t hear very well because it is so loud in the stadium. We tried it and they just didn’t like it. We said forget about it and let’s go and be part of the game and absorb it.”
Q: What’s the new headset rule?
KELLY: “There’s four headsets that can be on current players. We have two of them on signalers. We actually have four of them on signalers, so we’d have to switch them out. We were going to use two of those to be earpieces. We tried it in our bench control, and the guys didn’t like it. It was something we thought and talked about, but felt this was the best way to go.”
Q: You mentioned to me with Drue once, he was a guy you had to kind of bang the table to get them to take. Did you envision this possibility of being an inside linebacker and being versatile at that position when you were recruiting him or even two years ago?
KELLY: “I thought he would impact our program from a toughness standpoint. Would he end up at ‘Buck’ linebacker? No. I don’t know that I envisioned that. I knew his demeanor, the way he handled himself that he would be a positive impact on our football program.”
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