Brian Kelly got in front of the media for the third time since the loss to the Miami-Florida Hurricanes, and had to answer more questions about that game than this upcoming Saturday’s game between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Navy Midshipmen.
As much talk as there has been about Notre Dame’s running game coming out of the 41-8 loss to the Canes, it’s Notre Dame’s run defense that springs the most interesting question for me.
It was pointed out that over the past two weeks against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons and the Hurricanes, the Irish allowed 237 and 239 yards rushing – and now they take on the best rushing attack in the country in Navy. How can the Irish improve?
Just we have to have a better attention to detail. Our fits have got to be better. We’ve got to get off blocks. We’ve got to get back to that mentality of dominating those one-on-one matchups. You’ve got to win some matchups. We had guys in position to make plays. We’ve got to simply make the plays.
Look, they ran — their first half running attack was one that we felt really comfortable that we should be more effective with. We’ve simply got to be better in our preparation and coach our guys better, go back and make sure that we’re teaching him the fundamentals so we can make the plays necessary.
So there’s no high science here. There’s nothing that can’t be prepared during practice for us to get back to playing the kind of run defense we need to play, simply stated.
High science. Last Saturday I felt like I was high and doing an odd science experiment with my emotions. *sigh*
The rest of the press conference is in the video below.