'We Are Looking Ahead.' Notre Dame Answers Challenge As Judgment Day Nears
PITTSBURGH – Notre Dame players stretched out in the corner of the Heinz Field lower bowl Saturday night, masked up and toting grab-and-go meals in a moment of relaxation.
A well-earned one, at that, after coach Brian Kelly revealed earlier how he challenged them this week. Kelly issued an entreaty more demanding than extra practice or more up-downs.
“We have to elevate our play if we want to have any chance of getting to our goal, and that is to win a championship,” he said after the Irish’s 45-3 win over Pitt that pushed Notre Dame to 5-0 and 4-0 in the ACC.
In other words, the 4-0 start wasn’t good enough. It was as if he heard the message board chatter and angst after last week’s 12-7 win over Louisville. Above all, he loudly hinted he’s well aware the biggest regular-season game of his tenure is on the doorstep, one that will shape Notre Dame’s championship opportunities and bring reality to their aspirations.
Kelly’s way of acknowledgement: Telling his team the display from the prior month wouldn’t win that game and win a title. So reach back and find more. Take it to someone.
Turns out, his plea was one Notre Dame had an easy time meeting.
“We're not interested in just winning football games,” Kelly said. “We're interested in being a championship football team and just playing to win games is not good enough anymore, we need to elevate our compete level, we need to coach better. We need to play better.”
You’ll be hard pressed to find a starker contrast to his “winning his hard” credo seven days earlier was. Complete opposites. Notre Dame’s dominant day was the response to him.
If Nov. 7 against Clemson is the final exam, another air-tight defensive effort and 19.5 yards per completion Saturday was passing a mid-term. The win was Notre Dame’s 29th straight over an unranked team, the second-longest active streak nationally, but that mark will fall on deaf ears if the Tigers leave South Bend with a victory in hand. For all the warranted discussion about Notre Dame’s overall health and stability, its ultimate goals and reasons they haven’t been reached them are still top of mind.
“There’s a lot more on the table for us to go and get,” said grad student wide receiver Bennett Skowronek.
Through four games, Notre Dame hadn’t shown enough to think toppling the top-ranked team was feasible. Kelly more or less told his players that, while emphasizing his belief Notre Dame at its best is good enough to beat Clemson. Results didn’t match potential. Time was running out to make them meet, and instead of turning to some day-by-day cliché, he came right out and accepted it.
“It’s risky because in some instances, people would say, well, you're looking ahead,” Kelly said. “Well, we are looking ahead a little bit. We needed to get this football team to understand that they are really good.”
Maybe dismantling a disintegrating Pitt team didn’t change much in regard to the exhaustive “what does it mean for Clemson” outlook, but it’s hard to say a 42-point win altered it for the worse. Notre Dame had a receiver emerge when it needed one most. The expected game-breaker this year, junior Kevin Austin, re-broke his foot in practice Thursday and will miss the season. His injury came just when he was on track for an every-down role and had put the first fracture behind him.
Enter Skowronek, the owner of 110 catches and a proven threat in the Big Ten at Northwestern. He hadn’t been that through a month with Notre Dame, with a hamstring issue as a factor. Against Pitt, he twice made contested catches in single coverage and ran in for a touchdown – 107 yards between them.
Austin’s injury threatened to turn a weakness into a sinkhole. Skowronek gave hope the receiver position can be serviceable. Freshman tight end Michael Mayer can boost Notre Dame’s passing offense too. His five-catch, 73-yard day on eight targets is the type of performance Notre Dame should strive to get from him each week. He’s too talented not to involve.
“Come out, play loose and make plays,” Skowronek said. “That was our focus as an offense. Not worried about the score, but win your individual matchups and make plays.”
It sounds a lot like the chorus after last week’s defensive performance, when players credited a simple game plan that allowed them to avoid thinking and just line up and go. Trust and believe they’re better than who’s across from them. That has been the case in every game so far this year. It seems to be in every game except one on the schedule.
For the one exception, Notre Dame needs to go into it feeling like it is indeed the better team and with results to support it.
“Attack all the time because we're going to need to look like this down the road if you want to fulfill any of your goals," Kelly said. "So it was really less about who we were playing and more about how we played.”
Maybe not about who Notre Dame was playing on this night, but certainly about who it will have to play and beat to reach its goal.
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