Brian Kelly made a very controversial decision to go for two, and a lot of the people in the press box blamed #15 Notre Dame’s loss on that very decision. You saw the game, so you can make up your own mind. If you didn’t here’s the Q&A Brian Kelly had with reporters in the press room explaining his justification to attempt the two point conversion.
I’ll leave the speculation, debate and opining up to you. The comment section is below, speak your mind. Or Tweet me @paulmbanks. Here’s the transcript:
Q. Going for 2 there, what was the thought process on that?
Brian Kelly: Going for 2. At that point, it was a coin toss of 1 or 2. So we decided to go for 2
Q. Brian, you said at the coin toss you’re up 11. What is conventional wisdom say at that point and what persuaded you to actually do what you did?
Brian Kelly: Our chart tells us in that situation to go for 1 but we were up I think 11 at the time and we felt like given the circumstances, our kicking game situation, that we were going to try to extend it with a 2 point play.
Q. Did you do the math as to where that would take you with a couple knees?
Brian Kelly: I did, yeah. We have somebody upstairs that gives us that.
Q. Brian, you said you did not consider taking a knee. When you do the math it looks like you would have been punting with 20 seconds left at worse.
What went into your decision to just run the ball instead of taking a knee there and playing conservatively?
Brian Kelly: I don’t know that I’ve ever in my college career taken a knee and then punted the football. We would have run the ball once at least and then considered our options from there. So, it just never entered into my mind to think in those terms.
Q. And then back to the 2 point conversion, what are the advantages of going up 13 versus 12? I know you mentioned the kicking game was an issue but to go for 13 instead of 12, in comparison, is there that much of a difference in comparison to risking a 2 point conversion by Northwestern to keep the opportunity alive to tie the game is what happened?
Brian Kelly: In retrospect — there’s no advantage in retrospect. We felt that — we felt at the time with the struggles in the kicking game that we would have a good opportunity in the 2 point play that we picked and we felt very confident that we would be successful.
If it pans out the way it does, no, there’s very little that I can use percentage-wise that it’s a higher percentage.
Brian Kelly skipped an opening statement and went straight into Q and A pic.twitter.com/MjmsIqYTWh
— Paul M. Banks (@PaulMBanks) November 16, 2014
-Here’s field level video of Jack Mitchell’s game winner in OT
Beyond just this storyline, Notre Dame versus Northwestern proved to be a lot more interesting and captivating a game than one would have expected given the 18 point spread heading into it. You had a big time upset OT victory. You had a defensive PAT! Hey, that’s something you don’t see everyday. Lots of fumbles, drops, a blocked FGA, a missed chip shot FGA, lead changes, ties, and other assorted goodness that makes for a typically wild college football Saturday.
Here are some nuggets, notes, stats and tidbits.
-The first half produced weirdly, oddly symmetrical statistics. Look how evenly matched Notre Dame and Northwestern were in the first half.
Total yards: ND 305 NU 298.
Passing yards: ND 153, NU 149.
Rushing yards: ND 152, NU 149
Interceptions: Everett Golson 1, Trevor Siemian 1
References to 1995 meeting between the two teams this week: national media 1,734,587,934, local media 1,734, 587,90
-Notre Dame now has an interception in each of its last 13 games. It is the second-longest active streak in the FBS behind only Ole Miss’ 15.
-Justin Jackson ran for more yards today (149, on 23 carries with a TD), than anybody else versus Brian Kelly’s team this season.
-Everett Golson had a new career high for single game rushing yards (78, on 10 carries)…by midway through the second quarter. His 61 yard TD burst 44 seconds into the game was the longest run of his career.
-Northwestern WR Tony Jones dropped what would have been three certain touchdowns today. Ouch!
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and very often writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his features stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2
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