Notre Dame football Coach Brian Kelly took ownership of all that went wrong on defense for his team tonight.
“Those are the guys we have. We can’t trade em, they’re not getting cut. We recruited them, so I don’t want to hear anybody– I told our staff: Those are our guys, so we’ve gotta get ’em better,” Kelly said.
“We can cry all we want about what we didn’t do, but we got to start doing it.”
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“We’re too sloppy overall as a football team,” he later added during a press session in which he was noticeably and understandably quite upset. He even got a bit testy with a reporter telling him in angry condescension:
“If you were listening I just told you about two huge mistakes on special teams and the difference in the game was 8 points. So we gotta clean up the whole deal!”
Read between the lines there, pertaining to what Kelly said about his defensive personnel. You can infer, or at least speculate that defensive coordinator Brian van Gorder is very much on the hot seat right now. He could be heading for Mel Tucker when he was with the Chicago Bears kind of territory. Not there now, but you can see it in the distance on the nav.
Offensively, it was a different story. You got to love the heart, soul and fight of this Notre Dame football team. Down 29 points, they could have easily shut up shop. Instead they rallied all the way back, to where they were just one possession down inside five minutes to go.
In the end though, the long drought against top ranked competition at home continues.
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QB DeShone Kizer had another huge game, throwing for 344 yards (a career high), rushing for two scores and throwing for two touchdowns 2016 It was his third career game with multiple rushing scores.
Kizer has scored a rushing touchdown in each of his last five games, and in eight of his last nine games overall dating back to a win over Temple in 2015. Kizer has thrown a touchdown pass in 14 of his 16 career games played.
Kelly was asked if Kizer has to carry this team from here on out. The Coach rejected that narrative outright.
“Look at college football. Defenses give up points all over. What we have to do is clean up some things and we’re going to continue to work on it, but, no, DeShone Kizer is not going to be asked to carry us. The entire football team, and my coaching staff in particular, is in a position where they have to coach better. I’ve got to coach better. We’ve got kids that fight and have resolve,” the Notre Dame football coach responded.
“We’ve been down twice big against two really good football teams, and we put ourselves back in a position to win both games, and we couldn’t because we made too many mistakes. We’re sloppy as a football team. There is not a referendum on who’s got to carry who, the defense can’t do that, we’re too sloppy overall as a football team.”
Saturday’s game was the 251st straight sellout at Notre Dame Stadium. Notre Dame has played in front of a sellout crowd in 300 of its last 301 home games since a 1973 Thanksgiving Day game against Air Force.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.