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UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 17, 2018

Brian Kelly

South Bend, Indiana

Notre Dame - 36, Syracuse - 3

BRIAN KELLY: 3-0 at Yankee Stadium, I love it. We've been here three times, and each time we come back, it's been a really great experience for our football team. We're treated great here at Yankee Stadium. Class organization, everything is done the right way, as you would expect. And we hold up our end of it by playing and winning. So we'll keep coming back.

Good football game today. I think we got off to a good start. That was, obviously, very important to us, being on the road. Defensively, I thought the plan was outstanding. We executed it flawlessly. I think our staff did a great job of putting our kids in a really good position to succeed, and then we have to execute. We executed very well. We gave -- you know, we gave up some things early on to the run game, but we played so well on the back end.

Alohi Gilman was given the game ball for his play today. He was all over the field. And I think -- you know, when you look at it, his play was infectious because he was outstanding on special teams as well. So really big effort.

Offensively, we moved the ball. It was a really good plan offensively as well. I was really pleased with the structure and what we wanted to do and how we went about it, but not as clean as we would like. Penalties, stalling in the red zone, but 36 points late in November against the No. 12 ranked team in the country. You know, you are who you are this late in the year. That's a good football team. We were able to do some things offensively that put us in a really good position and never really felt like the game was threatened at any time.

Ian played pretty good. I think the week off definitely showed a little bit of rust, but he got out of it clean. Feels good after the game, and he'll be able to build off it. Chase Claypool played well. I thought we blocked two very good ends. Coleman and Robinson are really good defensive ends. I thought we did a pretty good job blocking those guys. That was a big concern of ours. Dexter ran well when he had the opportunity. So a lot of good things to take from it.

I thought our special teams -- I don't know if we kicked it great, but we ran and covered because they're explosive on special teams.

So all in all, when you go on the road in November, you beat the 12th ranked team in the country, I feel really good about the win.

Q. An offense that scores 44 points a game, did you have the confidence going in that you could take them out of their game like that?
BRIAN KELLY: I can tell you this. I really liked our plan going in. I liked the structure of it. I liked what we were doing during the week. I liked the focus of our defense. They really trusted what we were doing. If we were going to play with discipline, which we did, I felt like we were going to have great success.

Now, you don't -- as a coach, you go into the game thinking, if we do these things right, we're going to play really well. I don't know that we ever pinned a shutout on a performance against a team that's putting up 44 points, but I felt really good in the preparation and the plan, and I felt, if we were disciplined, which we were, we would do well.

Q. Coach Babers mentioned that, it was kind of a compliment, that you guys were able to turn any chess match into checkers because, every time they looked out there, someone was covered on their squad, or you were beating them one-on-one. Did you feel you got this game in control as you went into the second quarter, even from a personnel standpoint?
BRIAN KELLY: We felt -- we had a similar situation at Navy where we felt like our plan was outstanding, and then we got too smart. We made adjustments at halftime. We kind of mucked it up a little bit. We said we're not making any changes. We're going to stick with what we're doing, believe in what we're doing, and let's just get better at what we've put together. It put us in a really good position.

We were going to have to rally a couple of times. They caught us in some pass rush situations where they ran the football, where we were short some numbers, but that was all it was going to be, that they would hit a play when we were in a pass rush situation. Other than that, we were going to have a good situation there.

Q. And the new wrinkle in the passing game, I think it was the first touchdown drive, Jones out of the backfield for a catch and then Dexter Williams for the touchdown. Is that something you saw in Syracuse or just been coming?
BRIAN KELLY: No, we've had it. We've been kind of holding it. We had a couple of other wrinkles too that we didn't execute. We slipped on one. We've got plenty of offense that we haven't thrown out that we just have to be a little bit cleaner.

Q. Brian, on the first drive, I think Book goes 3 of 4, and he scrambles. I think you punted. Did you need to see him -- to see him in the game to say, okay, he's fine?
BRIAN KELLY: No, not really. He had a good week of practice, and we do a two-minute drill every Wednesday where it's live rush, and we went four down. We usually go three down just to make sure we don't get anybody banged up or have injuries. I said, let's go four down, and let's get after him.

He got banged around a little bit in that two-minute drill, and he was fine, and that's when I knew we weren't going to have to hold our breath, if you will, with his first drive. So I thought he was going to be fine.

Q. Coach, back in September when you guys kicked off against Michigan, you were talking about this team trying to build its identity. I think the identity is showing what it is. Can you talk about this team's chemistry because it seems to be much different from years past.
BRIAN KELLY: They love playing together. It's a brotherhood that they have built. Look, most coaches will tell you that, if you walk into the locker room and you see a group of guys that hang out together that interact with each other and they care about each other, you've probably got a pretty good thing going. We sensed that from -- I did, from day one. It doesn't guarantee you're going to win games. It doesn't guarantee you're going to win ten games. But it does guarantee you you're going to have a group of guys that enjoy being around and that they'll probably do some really good things at times, and this group really enjoys being around each other.

Q. If I can follow up with one more. Your chemistry with this team seems to be a lot different than other teams. Can you talk a little bit about that?
BRIAN KELLY: I think just that we've invested a lot with each other, and I enjoy being around them because that's what I do now. I'm just around them a lot more. I'm in the locker room with them. I'm having meals with them. I'm hanging out with them a lot more. They haven't allowed me to clock in on their games yet, but when they do, we really will reach a milestone. I just think hanging around them a lot more allows that kind of relationship to grow.

Q. Brian, talk about your run defense shutting down Syracuse's two-headed monster. Last week they ran all over Louisville. I think they're still running up there in the Carrier Dome. What did you do this week in preparation for that two-headed monster?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, so three really important plays, the counter play, and they're really good. Cavanaugh is a heck of an offensive line coach. I know him, have a lot of respect for him. We knew we had our hands full. We had to stop the run game to the level that put them behind the chains. So we had to mix some things up. We had some stunts that we felt like could affect the counter play, which is a big play for them. And then really do a great job when we were in a five-man box. So we showed a five-man box, which prompted some run, and then added a hat in late.

If you can't stop them from running the football, you have no chance to slow them down. So it was a big emphasis all week.

Q. Ian Book looked really accurate today. Can you talk about sort of what you saw from him, and obviously his first start back from injury and throwing the ball all over the field.
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, that's who he is, you know. He missed a couple of reads today. I thought he was a little late in delivering the football at times, but he's good. He's a good player. I mean, he gets the ball out. I thought that what we asked him to do today was probably, of all the games that he's played, required him to be sharper today than in any game this year. They're a heavy cover one team, so your timing really needs to be precise. I don't know that he was precise today after the week off.

If you play a lot of zone, you can -- you've got a little bit more time. Today he might have been a click off at times, but he's still pretty effective.

Q. Brian, like you said, you're playing the No. 12 team in the country. To beat them the way that you did, do you think this kind of shows that you guys should be included in the same conversation with Alabama and Clemson as national title favorites?
BRIAN KELLY: Here's my only comments on that. We're not interested in being compared. All we want to do is play our best football when we get to November. We're playing really, really well, especially on defense. Can we play better as a game offensively? Yeah, we probably could. Today we didn't do the things.

But when you're playing really good defense -- and remember now, we've played triple option. We've played a very physical team in Northwestern. And then Florida State and a spread offense in Syracuse. We've had to do a lot of things in the month of November, and defensively we're playing really well. We're playing good football.

I think the only message to me -- or that we would like to get out is we're playing really good football. So this narrative of who's playing great or who's not playing good, we're playing pretty good football right now.

Q. Brian, do you ever see Ian Book get rattled?
BRIAN KELLY: So he didn't make weight his freshman year. He was ten pounds, and he used a ten-pound weight, and he put it in his shorts, and Balis found out and ripped him and made him run. That's the only time I saw him get rattled. That's a true story. He's going to hate that I told it. But he got rattled that day. On the football field, I haven't seen him get rattled. He is really steady. Takes the information, processes it very well.

Tommy does a great job. Tommy Rees does a great job of really one-on-one talking with him about what's going on and absorbs it very well.

Q. You have to reach a certain weight?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, so you've got to keep your weight, and he was losing weight. If you lose weight, you lose points, and it hurts your teams, and he was down ten points, so he put a ten pound plate in his shorts and weighed in, and Balis found out and made him run.

Q. What did he say to him about that?
BRIAN KELLY: I can't remember, but it wasn't -- it was like seriously? I mean, that's like an 8-year-old does that.

(Laughter).

Q. Brian, over here. Obviously, you play USC next week and a spot in the playoffs is on the line. Can you just speak to the opportunity that awaits next week in Los Angeles.
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, our guys know who they're playing, and clearly it's a rivalry game for us. They know what it will take. Each and every week, this group has been so good at staying in the moment, staying week to week, and I know you hate when I talk in these terms, but they have done a great job with their process and just their preparation from week to week has been -- look, you can't win all of your 11 games unless you stick with your process and avoid the noise and do all those things. This group does a great job with it.

And I expect them to do the same thing this week, and they know about USC. They know about the rivalry game. But it will be, if they stick with their process and doing a great job in their preparation and play fast and free, they'll play well.

Q. And you think you'll go to the playoff if you win? You don't think there's any doubt about that?
BRIAN KELLY: I don't know that. I mean, I don't know that, if we win our last game, that we're going to the playoffs. But that's not in our control. So we don't even worry about stuff that's not in our control. What we can control is how we prepare. If we do a good job there and we win our game, then we would have won all of our games, and then we'll let people decide who should go to the playoffs. Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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