Beating the #14 ranked team in the country at home is not usually “a program win” for Notre Dame football. Especially so when that scenario is a “pick’em” kind of game. Some sports books had ND as the favorite, others had Georgia Tech as the favorite, and the line was not heavy in either direction.
Yet Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly kept referring to today’s 30-22 triumph as a “program win,” and he’s totally right. That’s due to all the serious injuries the team has suffered so far this season.
Coincidentally, another major injury setback was suffered today.
This time it was safety Drue Tranquill; a defensive back with three career starts to his credit. Here’s what Kelly said about Tranquill after the game:
“It’s a knee injury. Doesn’t look very good right now. We’ll get an MRI here. We only have a manual exam to go on right now. The manual exam was not a good one. But we’ll get an MRI tomorrow morning and then we’ll have definitive results. But we’re not optimistic at this point.”
That led to one of the team captains, Matthias Farley, getting a chance to play.
“Drue played very well in the first half, very well. He was on point with his keys, fighting off blocks, making tackles. They wanted to run counter option based upon what we were doing.”
“Matthias was then put into that position, early on in the third quarter made a big play getting the ball out. Obviously he needed to continue to do that the rest of the game.”
UPDATE SUNDAY: on Drue Tranquill: “He’ll have surgery “probably closer to two weeks. I think Rob Hunt, our trainer, would like to rehab him a little bit first before we have surgery,” Kelly said.
UPDATE MONDAY on Tranquill- torn right ACL, done for the season. Last season his year was cut short when Tranquill tore his left ACL.
In summer preseason training camp starting defensive tackle Jarron Jones was lost for the season (more on that here). In week one starting tailback Taurean Folston went down. QB1 Malik Zaire was a casualty of week three. Now it’s Drue Tranquill. Yes, every single football team suffers major injuries as the season goes on, but you have to wonder when 2015 Notre Dame football is finally going to catch a break in this regard. The Fighting Irish have lost six players for the season due to injury; it’s only week four.
Said Brian Kelly:
“You can’t explain it, so it doesn’t do us any good to really spend much time thinking about it, other than we feel terrible for Drue, for Malik and for all of the players that we’ve lost. But not much we can do about it, other than dig down deep and play the best we can for these guys, because they have given up everything to play this game.”
And of course, depth is going to be an issue and a concern, especially so as the injuries continue to pile on as we reach November and the postseason. Said Kelly:
“Well, certainly we can’t afford to lose any more players at key positions: Quarterback, running back, you start to get into true freshmen, and that will be obviously a significant change in what we look like.
Drue Tranquill was a very important player in our back end of the defense because of his versatility. So there is a break point.”
On the plus side, ND running back C.J. Prosise had a huge breakout game. Here’s more on that.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and sometimes writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. The website is also featured on News Now.
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