Quick-Hitters: Sept. 17 Brian Kelly Radio Show
On Thursday evening, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly made his first appearance of the season on his radio show two days prior to the Fighting Irish hosting South Florida on Saturday (2:30 p.m., USA Network).
Here are some of the things he addressed.
On signing a contract extension that will have him at Notre Dame through 2024:
"Contracts or contracts. It's just an honor to have the opportunity to continue to lead this storied program. It really is simply about providing the leadership for this program for the foreseeable future and that's what we wanted. We wanted to make sure that everybody was on the same page with Father Jenkins, his leadership. He's going to be here. I wanted to see that he was here and then our athletic director.
"We're all going to be here leaving in the same fashion and providing the same kind of messaging in recruiting the student-athletes here to Notre Dame.
On what areas he was pleased with after his team's 27-13 win over Duke:
"There's a number of things. First and foremost, we played a lot of players. In an opener, where you haven't played since December of 2019, the speed of the game, it's so important to get a lot of players in. And we did that. On the offensive side of the ball. I could go through all the names. We know them already, from Kyren Williams to Joe Wilkins to Mike Mayer, all of those guys on the offensive side of the ball.
"Defensively, the ability to play 11 defensive linemen, a number of different players in the back end, four linebackers. So getting all of that work is so very important to the development of your football team, and to get a win against the Power Five opponent. A team like Duke is a very well-coached football team and made things difficult for us in the first half."
On limiting Duke to one touchdown:
"I think the other thing we did better than we did last year, we were much more scrappy in the red zone this game in a sense that we kept them off the scoreboard in terms of touchdowns. Certainly, they kick some field goals, but we were resilient down there. That's what we have to continue to do. Now, we can't give up the big plays, as I mentioned to you earlier, but I think we had some guys step up and make some plays down there and really scrapped hard in the red zone in keeping them out of the endzone."
On freshman tight end Michael Mayer:
"He's going to be a really nice player for us. It's just a matter of him maturing and getting more involved in our offense. We've got so many really good tight ends. He's in the long line of many great tight ends that have come through the ranks here at Notre Dame. So we're really, really excited about where he's going to be this year. He needs some more time, more reps, but he made a couple of really big plays for us in this game against Duke."
On what he sees on film after studying South Florida:
"Well, first of all, speed on both sides of the ball. They've got I think, at least 15 or 16 transfers, so they're still finding themselves. So looking at the Citadel game is really difficult because it's a triple-option team, you don't get a lot of scouting from that game. But if you just look at the athletes that they have on both sides of the ball, it's a team that's going to match up with all of our position groups.
"What we have to do is get better as a team. If we play better, and we talked about this earlier in the week in terms of our defense has got to have better attention to detail, better focus. Then certainly from an offensive standpoint, the experience that we got with all of our young players will be instrumental because we're going to have to obviously play with more consistency from the offensive standpoint."
On why fans could see a big improvement in this Notre Dame team from week one to week two:
"We could not duplicate the kind of physicality or speed that we saw last week against Duke. You just can't do it in the camp setting. You're really concerned about the potential on-field issues that you could have during COVID. You're always erring on the side of caution. In this past game that we played, it's the only time that we got that kind of physicality and speed. That gave us a great sense of what to expect moving forward. That, for me, is invaluable, and that will be a great tool for us moving forward."
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