Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly addressed the media after a 47-40 double-overtime win over Clemson.
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On what it was like to see his players comeback after losing a 13-point lead:
"For me, just watching our team handle themselves in the fourth quarter, handling themselves when there was adversity, as a coach, those are the special moments. We won the football game, and I'm certainly excited about that, but more so, when you watch your players exhibit resolve and exhibit grit and refuse to lose a football game against the No. 1 team in the country that by the way, hadn't lost in 36 regular-season games. That's the special part about coaching these guys at Notre Dame. You have the man under the jersey that's pretty special. That's my takeaway.
"I know you guys want to talk about players and what this means to the program, and I'm not really interested in all that stuff. I'll be more than willing to answer all those questions. As a coach, you commit your vocation to this because you love seeing your players overcome what amounts to be sometimes difficult odds. That was fun to watch those guys."
On what he did to prepare his offense to score at the end of regulation:
"On the final drive, the way we managed the clock, and they quite frankly gave us a little bit of help going out of bounds. We declined the penalty because we wanted the downs on that last drive where they had the football. It allowed me to save the two timeouts. All I said really was that we had plenty of time. I told Tommy [Rees] we could throw a run or two in the mix. We were able to run the ball a couple of times, which gave us some easy looks because they were in Tampa 2.
"I just said, 'Ian, you're going win the football game.' I told him that a couple of times and kept reiterating it to him on the sideline that he was going to win the game for us. And he did."
On the atmosphere the students in the stadium provided and how he prepared for them to rush the field:
"I felt like our students were awesome. They made it feel like a true game, even though there were less than 15,000 in the stadium. They did their best to give us that feeling. When they storm the field, you got a sense of a special moment at Notre Dame. I know our players did as well. What made it even more special was what I had alluded to earlier was just the resolve. I had told our team, and again, I'm doing a lot of things I probably shouldn't be doing.
"But I told our team at our walkthrough today, 'listen, I just want you to know when we win this thing that the fans are going to storm the fields. With COVID being as it is, we got to get off the field and get to the tunnel.' Now I beat them all to the tunnel. So that didn't go over so good. But they reminded me that I did tell them that. My skills in prognostications were pretty good today."
On getting his team ready to play Boston College next weekend after such an emotional victory:
"We got so much more work to do. Look, [Boston College] is going to be a challenge for us. I've got to get this football team back up emotionally ready to play. We've got a target on our backs now. There are so many more things on my plate relative to what I have to do, then really concern myself with playoffs and who's in and who's not in. There are there other people that will do that? Because the real challenge now is to keep this football team excelling. We got a lot of things we got to work on that we saw today. And that will be my focus moving forward is to get this football team ready for BC."
On how his team played on both sides of the ball against Clemson:
"We ran the ball for over 200 yards. I don't know when last time that team has given up 200 yards rushing. We threw the ball effectively. We threw it for 300. When you rush for 200 and you throw for 300, you're don't some pretty good things offensively. Yeah, we'd like to play a little bit better defensively in certain situations. When you look at it, college football puts so much pressure on defenses that I think it's the ability to really be who you are. As I've said, we're not going to shy away from the fact that we have to stop the run and run the football if we're going to win these kinds of games. And that's what we did today."
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