Quick-Hitters: Brian Kelly Duke Week Press Conference
Notre Dame football head coach Brian Kelly met with reporters via Zoom Monday the week of the team's opener vs. Duke. During the press conference, Kelly touched on the Blue Devil defense, playing in a quieter Notre Dame Stadium this fall, safety Kyle Hamilton's expanded role and more.
The Sept. 12 season opener versus the Blue Devils will kick off at 2:30 p.m. ET.
Here are some of the highlights of Kelly’s press conference:
• Kelly displays high praise for Duke’s defense.
“If you look at this football team, seven starters [return] on both sides of the ball. Defensively, I think it arguably could be one of the best defensive backfields and the best tandem of corners that we see all year. And certainly off the edge, you may not find as good of a pass-rushing combination that we’re going to see with this group.
“They’re very dynamic off the edges, as I mentioned. Corners that can be extremely disruptive.”
• Kelly on the identity of the 2020 Notre Dame Football team heading into the opener against Duke.
“I think you always want to have a sense of who you are heading into the opener. I think we’re evolving later than we have in years past because of the distractions. But I think I’ve got a pretty good sense and feel for who we are. Strong leadership. I think we have young players who are going to contribute.
"This is going to be a long year, one that’s going to involve a lot of players actively involved in what we’re doing. I think we’re going to see a group that has a lot of experience coming back, but you’re going to see some young players be part of this as well.
“Defensively, I think I’ve mentioned this, but I like the athleticism and the speed. From an offensive standpoint, the physicality, especially when we deal with the group that we have coming back on the offensive line.”
• Kelly on how his team has managed the COVID-19 virus heading into the season opener against Duke.
"Once again, our preparation has been about our discipline off the field. As we go into our mental Monday meetings, we have no players that are in quarantine and we have no players that are in isolation. So we have a full roster.
"We tested again today. We had over 215 negative tests again with an antigen test. We'll test again Wednesday and Friday. I feel really good about the discipline of our football team, and as I said, we're excited about playing some football on Saturday."
• Kelly on how the COVID-19 pandemic might affect college football early in the season.
"You've got to go play the games, and we were in a different place this year in terms of our preparation than when I made that comment [on our team's potential] in December. A lot of different things have occurred. We didn't have a spring practice, which I don't know that anybody is really going to be able to tell what that does in terms of the effect it has on your football team, particularly in these early games.
"The second thing is we didn't get all of our early practices in quite frankly. I don't know who will, but there are those distractions that we had to go through. And other teams will have those same distractions. But my point being, those weren't in play in December, but the basic tenets of having a really good football team, potentially a great football team, are in place. Now we're going to have to go prove it."
• Kelly on how safety Kyle Hamilton's role will expand heading into his sophomore season.
"I think he's accepted more responsibility, both on and off the field, as well as at his position. In our sub-packages, Kyle Hamilton is not going to be just a center fielder. It's safe to say that in year two, you can start to do many more things.
"You'll see him do things that we asked Alohi Gilman to do for us last year. If you felt like Alohi was put in positions that accounted for versatility, you can expect that's what you'll see from Kyle Hamilton."
• Kelly on the team competing for an ACC championship in 2020.
"It's never been a goal, but it's an established goal now to win a championship and an ACC championship. Our mission is to win a national championship and graduate all of our players. To be able to talk in terms of winning a championship and now an ACC championship and, if you win that, you keep your mission alive for a national championship.
"You've got both of them now in your eyes and in your vision for what you want to accomplish during the season. I don't know that it changes a whole lot in terms of our standard, in terms of what we want to accomplish. It's one week at a time and living up to our standard means total preparation and our traits.
"They're all kind of wrapped up in one. The really interesting part of this is that it brings a bigger focus on the week-to-week because you're dealing with 10 ACC games, where we didn't have that kind of focus in years past."
• Kelly on his expectations for Tommy Rees as the new Notre Dame offensive coordinator.
"I think he's going to do quite well. He was on a job interview against Iowa State, which was a very difficult chore with a defense that you don't see very much in a 3-3-5 defense, against a very good defensive coordinator in coach [Jon] Heacock.
"He did a great job in his preparation, and he's been that same person since that interview that he had. He's been organized. His meetings have been outstanding. His practice preparation has been exactly what I'm looking for, and I expect the same thing.
"We've had a couple of dress rehearsals with him up in the box and signaling in and communication, and I've listened in and liked the communication. I think it will go extremely smoothly, and I think it will be extremely efficient. I expect a very good and successful run with Tommy as our offensive coordinator."
• Kelly on the composure of this Notre Dame team heading into week one.
"I don't think you can go through what we've gone through without some composure. You can get rattled easily. Rattled when there's a positive test or rattled with the media information that comes out relative to school closing or football shutting down or the troubles that we're having in our country. It's easy to get rattled and lose your focus and get distracted.
"This group has done an incredible job of managing that. Look, that doesn't mean they're immune to what's going on around them. They're tuned into it, but they've done a really good job of parking a lot of that. When it's time to get to the football field, by and large, they've done a great job."
• Kelly on playing in a new environment at Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday.
"Now we've got to be able to put it together and go from a practice mindset into a game mindset because that's going to be different. We're going to go into a stadium that is unlike any other stadium that we've been in before. Certainly, we'll have some fans in it, but it's going to be a lot like what we've seen on TV, whether it be like the bubble in the NBA or NHL.
"Your sidelines are going to have to create a lot of that energy. You're going to have to create a lot of that energy. You're going to have to get into the right zone individually and find your zone. There's still a lot of work ahead of us to show that composure and show that maturity when we get to game day, but that's the next challenge for this team."
• Kelly on his evaluation of his recruiting department's work over the summer.
"I'm really pleased with an all-in approach that our recruiting office has had. When I say an all-in approach, it's having to take on different roles than what they were hired for. When you talk about graphics and you talk about on-campus recruiting, it's easy to say, "well, that's your responsibility," but when you have to do other things and you've got to make sure you're helping us get on Zoom calls and be part of the hundreds of Zoom calls we were actually part of. Being creative and being on a creative team to put together virtual visits.
"What I appreciate more is an all-in mentality that our recruiting office has had in shifting gears and finding ways to reach the student-athletes that couldn't make it to campus and continuing recruiting. We're still not done. We feel like there are some exciting things in front of us in the next couple of weeks."
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