November A Defining Month For Notre Dame

Through his first three seasons at Notre Dame from 2010-12, head coach Brian Kelly had earned the “Mr. November” moniker.

During that span, Kelly was 10-1 in that defining month, the first Fighting Irish coach to have achieved that fine a record after 11 November games since Jesse Harper in 1913‑15.

It began in 2010 when his reeling 4-5 team on a two-game losing streak, and having to suddenly start freshman Tommy Rees at quarterback, defeated No. 15 Utah 28‑3. Later that month at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Irish snapped an eight-game losing streak to USC.

And there’s more.

Kelly also was 10‑1 in November during his three-year stint at the University of Cincinnati (2007-09) before coming to Notre Dame, winning his last eight contests in that month. Four of those victories were against ranked teams, and the lone defeat was in 2007 versus No. 5 West Virginia (28-23).

And wait, there’s more!

In regular-season games that extended into the month of December while he was at Cincinnati, Kelly was 2-0, highlighted by the dramatic 45-44 win at No. 15 Pitt in which a Bowl Championship Series bid was on the line. The Bearcats trailed 31-10 before rallying to victory.

Finally, Kelly also won his last two November games while at Central Michigan University in 2006, highlighted by the MAC championship game, the team’s first such title in 12 years.

Thus, in his last 26 November/December regular-season games from 2006-12, including the MAC title game, Kelly was 24-2 (.923 winning percentage). His lone loss at Notre Dame in November was 28-14 at Stanford in 2011, when quarterback Andrew Luck led the Cardinal.

At the time, Kelly said much of the November success was based on year-round conditioning plans, headed by his longtime right-hand man, Paul Longo. This included proper nutrition, hydration and pacing of training and practices throughout the year. A huge part of conditioning also was not over-working players.

“We make it such that it’s not a grind,” Kelly said during that time of how the practices are set up. “It’s not a sprint but a marathon, and that October is for pretenders and November is for contenders. We try to ingrain within our players’ [and] coaches’ mind that this is now the time to kick it into gear. This is where you get the opportunity to play for championships.

“You can’t have a great November without having a great plan as it relates to your conditioning. That goes back to January. That goes back to what you do in June. If you try to win the battle in June and July and August, you’re probably going to come up short in November.

“We want to make sure the tank is full in November, and we’ve done a pretty good job of it.”

Alas, in the past four seasons from 2013‑16, Notre Dame is only 7‑10 under Kelly in the month of November.

It was stunned the first week in a 28‑21 loss at Pitt in 2013, and imploded in both 2014 and 2016 with 1‑4 and 1‑3 marks, respectively. Even in 2015 when it was 3-1, unimpressive 28‑7 and 19-16 wins over 3‑9 Wake Forest and Boston College teams dropped Notre Dame in the rankings, before losing at Stanford.

The subpar November performances helped result in a massive overhaul of the football team’s infrastructure, including a new strength and conditioning staff headed by Matt Balis. The objective now even includes not just “maintaining” strength during an arduous football season, but continuing to enhance it. Senior rover/captain Drue Tranquill has indicated he has become stronger since the start of the season, but he is not alone.

“We have numbers that speak to strength gains in the weight room,” said Kelly during his weekly media session on Tuesday. “Our ability to track it now has really given us a physical edge as we go into each and every week, and it's something that we can relate to our players weekly … We're a stronger football team today than we were in August.”

Speed squats and hang clings are complemented by resistant band drills to help make this possible, according to Kelly, who sounded like a professor of kinesiology.

“You're trying to work things off of a one-rep max,” he explained of the in-season training. “About 75 percent of that needs to be what you're looking at, and we supplement that with band work. The band work gives us just about 65 to 70 percent of the one-rep max, so you're lowering the weight and adding the bands to get to within 75 percent of the one-rep max. And then we're working it off our elite forms, so we're moving the bar fast. To get that number, we're taking the weight times the speed to get the wattage, and that's giving us the neuromuscular firing that's giving us those numbers that we can track our players. That is applicable to the force against the ground, and we're seeing some great moves for us.”

Whatever all that means, it sounds good. He also credited Dale Jones — a Master Strength and Conditioning Coach who joined Balis’ staff — with his handling of the stretching that has limited injuries, and Dr. Amber Selking, who serves as the Mental Performance consultant for Kelly and the football team.

“We wanted to be able to craft a consistent message in terms of how we wanted to prepare our football team from that mental performance standpoint,” said Kelly of Selking. “We've worked collaboratively in putting together the mental performance pieces for our football team since January. She's worked in physician groups, she's worked individually, she's worked with the units, offense, defense and special teams, and then she's worked one-on-one with me, so we could have this collaborative approach to mental performance.”

Nevertheless, Kelly several years ago cited one other example of the “secret” to his past success in November.

“You’ve got to be lucky, too,” Kelly summarized. “You’ve got to stay away from the injury situation and make sure your players are developed and count on guys … we’re going to have to count on guys to play a big role for us in November.”

This year would seem ripe to reverse the 2013‑16 trend and revert to the 2006‑12 success under Kelly.

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