Notre Dame Gets Physical On Day Three Of Spring Ball
Brian Kelly said he felt Notre Dame’s practices weren’t physical enough last season.
Entering his eighth year as Irish head coach, he went about changing that in the team’s first padded spring practice of 2017.
“Every year you look at where you think you can get better in practices,” Kelly said after Wednesday’s third spring workout. “We needed to tackle a little bit more, I thought we were a little soft in our practices.”
In the 45 minutes open to the media, Notre Dame did several tackling drills, including a one-on-one drill pitting the receivers against the defensive backs in the open field. In the limited window the media saw, it appeared as though the defensive backs still need considerable work in that area.
Kelly also wants to get some hits on his team’s running backs this spring, something that hasn’t happened enough in recent years, he said.
“We needed to do a better job, particularly with our wideouts and receivers getting together,” Kelly said. “We needed to thud the back more instead of tagging off. We built a lot of bad habits.
“Our backs need to get hit a little bit. I made sure that was part of our practice routine that had been missing.”
The Irish held two non-padded workouts March 8 and March 10 before having a week off for spring break. When the players returned, Kelly said he was pleased with the results of the conditioning tests conducted this past Sunday.
Tackling will be an emphasis this spring, Kelly said, while the Irish try to make up for some “lost ground.”
“What I liked about it more than anything else is there wasn’t a big drop-off today,” Kelly said. “Usually you go two days and then you take a week off, then you go back and put your pads on, it took us only a couple periods to get back up to form. That was nice to see.
“We forced kind of the action early with some contact, that was the right move. It got everybody in the right frame of mind just with the way we want to practice.”
Notre Dame returns to the practice field Friday from 7:30 to 9:45 a.m. The practice is closed to the media. Assistant coaches and selected players will speak to the media later that afternoon.
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