Junior quarterback Brendon Clark's Tuesday foray into the transfer portal won't have much on-field consequence this season, but it made an impact on the scout team.
Clark was Notre Dame's No. 4 quarterback, but he had been running the scout team and even earned some 11-on-11 reps against the first-team defense during No. 13 Notre Dame's off week. Without him, head coach Brian Kelly changed up the scout-team routine in preparing for Saturday's game vs. USC (7:30 p.m. ET, NBC).
“Losing Brendon forced us to have a scout team situation where we wanted to have a competitive situation," Kelly said Thursday. "We did a little more against our defense. We call it 'pick-it period' where we pick some plays we have in our offense that are similar to USC and we run them as our offense. Kind of high-school related, in a sense. We wanted to give them some good looks.
“We picked up a little bit of that with ones vs. ones going at each other, and we’d mimic some of USC’s plays. Then we rotated Buchner and Pyne down [to the scout team] for a couple periods and gave those guys a look, because that’s what we needed to do.”
It was part of an off week that focused mostly on self-scouting. Notre Dame was less concerned with personnel shake-ups than it was with reviewing its overall identity and how it could be tweaked.
“I don’t know there was a situation where we needed to feature somebody more as much as we needed to look at effectiveness within our entire offense, defense and special teams," Kelly said. "We wanted to make sure we were balanced by formation, that we were not giving away any tendencies one way or the other.
"We looked at our first couple of drives, our first-quarter scoring, red-zone and third-down efficiency. Not as much a particular player as much as overall, ‘Where are the areas we can be more effective in coaching and schematically?’"
Saturday vs. USC is the first opportunity to see those potential changes, if they're even big enough to detect. Kelly met with reporters Thursday afternoon for the final time before the game. Here are some other topics he addressed.
Injury updates
• On sophomore tight end Michael Mayer: "Mayer will be starting for us. He has had a good week. We expect him to contribute and we’ll need him to contribute for us."
• On sophomore running back Chris Tyree: “He worked out a little bit yesterday. Running backs, they have to be at 100 percent. I don’t know that he’s at 100 percent right now. That’ll probably be a game-time decision.”
• On freshman quarterback Tyler Buchner: “Buchner has had a good week. We’re back to getting him involved in the offense. He’s available and will be part of what we do offensively.”
• On junior defensive tackle Jacob Lacey: "Lacey has been limited this week, but we expect he will be able to give us something on Saturday. We’ll make that decision as we go through today’s practice, see how he looks. I don’t think he’s 100 percent, but I think he can give us some quality reps."
On playing so many teams after their off week
“There are wrinkles we see on these bye weeks. A lot of people talk about what our first-quarter scoring situation is, and a lot of times we’re making adjustments in the first quarter and halftime because sometimes it requires that. Some of it is ineffectiveness as well and not making efficient plays.
“It has been the nature of it the last few years that teams are coming off bye weeks. We have to adjust to some things we’re seeing for the first time. But that’s the nature of it."
On Xavier Watts' position
“He’s at the nickel/rover position. He’s cross-training. We have him playing a couple positions — we have him at nickel, we have him at safety. We’re trying to add a lot of work for him because we want to get him on the field. This is like preseason camp for him. He’s getting a lot of work right now at both safety and nickel.”
On backup running backs Logan Diggs and C’Bo Flemister
“We have confidence in both Diggs and C’Bo if Chris isn’t able to go at a high level. Chris could go right now, but I don’t know he’s at the level where we want to put him in the game yet.
"We feel confident with the other kids. I wouldn’t get too worked up on whether it’s two or three. I’d say it’s 2A and 2B with Flemister and Diggs.”
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