Notre Dame Looking To Build On 2017 Upgrade, Habits
Finessing one’s way around direct questions is an art college football coaches perfect through the years.
Ninth-year Fighting Irish head coach Brian Kelly put it into practice at least a couple of times during his opening session with the media on Thursday to preview today’s (Friday, August 3) opening practice at Culver.
One was the status of senior running back Dexter Williams, who for the past several months has been rumored to be unavailable at the start of the season because of an internal disciplinary issue. Since June, Kelly has been asked multiple times about Williams’ status and whether he would play against Michigan. His reply has remained the vague “he is on our roster,” without stating firmly that the rumors are untrue.
There is also the matter of wearing green jerseys in the Sept. 1 opener versus the Wolverines. The University is actively promoting a “Green-Out” for the game, which includes the 2018 version of The Shirt, which is green.
“We will be pushing that on our end as well,” said Kelly of what is projected to be a sea of green inside the edifice. “I think some of our coaches, coaching gear, they will have some green in it.”
When asked if the team itself will don green jerseys, Kelly left the door ajar.
“I have not made a decision on that,” he said. “…Unless something happens drastically in my thought process, we’ll wear our traditional blue coming into that game.”
Of course, one can still wear the blue “coming into” the game but still switch to the green, as the 1977 national champions did during the pregame versus USC prior to switching to green when they went back to the locker room after warmups.
Whether a similar ruse — which has been attempted on and off since the end of the 1980 season, or the final campaign of head coach Dan Devine — will occur remains to be seen. The green under Kelly has been donned specifically in many of the Shamrock Series games, but not yet in Notre Dame Stadium.
Where there is more certainty for Kelly is continuing in the CEO role of the operation he did last season after the 4-8 meltdown in 2016. Six new assistant coaches, plus a new strength and conditioning staff, were hired in 2017. Most notably, Kelly turned the play-calling keys on offense over to first-year coordinator Chip Long after having the proverbial “too many cooks in the kitchen” issue in 2016.
The improvement to 10-3 and a final No. 11 national ranking — the same place the Coaches Poll that was released this week has the Irish — was “the first coat of paint” to Kelly to revitalize the operation.
Outside of the 41-8 debacle at Miami after the Irish had started 8-1 and rose to No. 3 in the College Football Playoff poll, Kelly was encouraged by the overall upgrades in preparation and believes the template established last year should improve in 2018.
“I love the fact that I'm able to be with our players both on and off the field in a variety of different roles,” Kelly said. “That was difficult to do when I was so immersed in the play calling. I enjoy it, and I enjoy our players enjoy having me around much more on a regular basis in meetings, in the training room, in the locker room, and we'll continue to do that.”
This August, Kelly said he will maintain the role to float around to various position units in a supervisory capacity, although the offense is where he tends to pay the most attention.
“I haven't targeted in my own mind that, ‘Hey, I'm going to go stand next to the running backs for three periods, or I'm going to go check out what the safeties are doing or what's the depth look like at a particular position," he said.
’“I want to observe the teaching. I want to observe the momentum that we have during practice and making sure that we're preparing our team the right way. I think you get into a little bit of trouble if you just kind of are hovering on one piece of grass. I'll be moving around a little bit. Eventually I come back to the offense because that's where the ball is, and I'm responsible for the football.”
Where Kelly does see a change is whereas last year there was a gradual implementation phase with all the new coaches, expanding the base concepts on both sides of the ball learned last year will be this time more accelerated, especially on offense.
“We've got to put it all in,” said Kelly. “They are going to drink through a firehose for the first couple of days, but we need to do that so we can start to work on some of these packages that we want to employ offensively.”
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