Notre Dame Fighting Irish College Football Postgame Quote, 12/19/2020

Obviously, I’m disappointed for our players. You don’t come this far and not want to play your very best. Hats off to Clemson, as the ACC champs, they earned it today. They were the better team. They were much more consistent than we were today and that’s really the story, consistency and performance. We did not have that consistency and performance we’ve had all year and some of it is who we played today; we played an outstanding football team. And because of it, we weren’t as consistent as a football team as we had been. So, very disappointing for our guys. I love the way they battled in the second half but again, we let the second quarter get away from us, and that was the difference in the game. So, we’ve got a really good football team. There’s no doubt this football team is one of the four best teams in the country and we’ll leave the rest up to the committee.

How were they able to flip the script on the run, running differential and rushing yardage? The second is, how do you pick up the pieces, at this point because you still have football left to play?

I think, you know, we got to watch a little bit more of the film to really give you an exact answer to the question. We came out, moved the ball pretty effectively on the first drive, mixed it up well. By and large, we stalled out a number of our drives in the red zone, and that’s a big part of this game and particularly in the first quarter, where we had some opportunities, but we couldn’t finish off drives. We missed a field goal and we were not very good running the ball on first down. We had some negative yardage plays. So, again, it’s the nature of playing an opponent a second time. They’re going to do some things and we’re making some adjustments on the sideline. You know, again, trying to get back to get a balance with running and throwing the football.

Picking up the pieces, I think that’s a bit over the top. This is a strong football team, strong-willed. It’s an outstanding football team. It’s one of the best teams in the country. They’ll bounce back. They’re disappointed. They’ve got to play more consistent and I’m quite confident that they will.

I’m curious to get an update on Kyle Hamilton and also if you could speak a little bit about what Clemson did to you guys in the passing game with Amari Rodgers trying to get some good favorable matchups and just how critical that was to the second quarter swinging in the game.

Yeah, I mean, obviously there were some favorable matchups there. They’re very, very talented. I thought a couple of instances where they were able to, and Trevor Lawrence was able to use his eyes and get Kyle out of the middle of the field to open up some double moves and you know some favorable matchups. You know, they’re very, very talented. They had time to throw, and again they made the plays.

Certainly from our perspective, losing you know Hamilton in the second half and certainly Nick (McCloud) wasn’t available for us as well. You get a little thin back there, but the second quarter was the key and not fitting a couple of the cue runs was certainly key as well. But I think, by and large, within the passing game, the second half, I thought we settled into a better routine. It was really the second quarter where he was able to get some one on one matchups and then we made some adjustments.

Six weeks ago, when Book would escape the pocket, he was able to run vertically. Today, it was more horizontally. What did they do to keep him so bottled up and moving laterally as opposed to downfield?

They’re ends (defensive ends) were up field, they were not rushing quite as hard off the edge as you saw. They were much more in a contained mode to keep him from getting outside. They did a nice job of minimizing his ability to get big chunk runs. Trying to keep him at bay was obviously part of the game plan, and they did it by the way they rushed their front four and then they brought a little bit more pressure from inside out and flushed him out to ends that were not upfield. They were staying flat and to the level of the quarterback.

You talked about it a couple times, but just make your case about being in the playoffs at this point.

We’ve got two top 15 wins, we’ve got a win over this Clemson team that, you know, it was number one in the country. I don’t know that anybody has a resume that has those two wins and you know; we’ve played 11 games. I mean, that matters. You know testing your team week in and week out. I think that, in my mind, puts us as without question as one of the top four teams in the country.

We always talk about the difference that Trevor Lawrence makes throwing the football, but his ability to run tonight on the designed runs, the RPO’s. How much of that also made a difference in some of their offensive success?

We talked about it after with the coaches. It’s the difference maker. His ability to run really stresses your coverage calls. It stresses a lot of things that you do in terms of your fits and where, you know, essentially you’re trying to get him to certainly not be that kind of payer. So what you’re trying to do is bring some pressures that eliminate those runs, but it just opens up some one on one matchups that are not that favorable and so it’s a dilemma. It’s something that we struggled with a little bit tonight.

I’m just wondering you know, when it became apparent that your receivers were struggling to get open, did it ever, you know go through your mind to maybe make some personnel changes? You know maybe throw Joe Wilkins in there or something just to try and spice it up a little bit. And then other thing is just, why did it take so long to give Chris Tyree his first touch of the game, and you know, it seemed to work out pretty well when he did touch the ball?

We didn’t feel like our receivers were having a hard time getting open. This was much more about down and distance and coverage. We were in so many third and long situations. When you drop more into coverage than you have out there, you could have five Jerry Rice’s out there and they’re not getting open as readily.

Chris Tyree’s our back that we bring in, when we feel like Kyren needs a breather and he got in there and bounced the play out there, but he’s in the rotation. Just like he did the last game we played, he broke off a 94 or 96 yard run, but you know he’s not the complete back that Kyren is yet, but he will be. He’s a good back.

As the committee is going to start taking a look at your resume and Texas A&M’s resume and other teams that are going to be evaluating for the playoff, do you feel like you guys are closer to what we saw against Clemson in November, or what we saw tonight?

Well, I think you look it at the body of work in terms of what we’ve done all year. You know, we played 11 games, beaten two top 15 teams. You know, we obviously lost to the No. 3 ranked team in the country tonight. It wasn’t our best effort but consistently when you play 11 games, and you have, you know, a win over the number one team in the country, and then you win against an outstanding North Carolina team. I don’t know that you need to look any further than that.

What was your message to the offense or kind of what was going through your mind in the first couple of drives when you guys are moving the ball but had some drives kind of sputter out there at the end?

Well, consistency and performance is going to be what’s going to judge how this game finishes and quite frankly, I told them we’ve got to finish. We can’t keep leaving points out here and there’s only so much you can do at that point. You’ve got to continue to stay positive with the guys and continue to look at ways to get the ball in the end zone. So it really doesn’t do much good to be over there yelling and screaming. They know what they need to do. They needed to finish off some drives we didn’t do it, but you know we’re all in this together. We’ve got to coach better, and our players got to make plays.

When you have a great football team, which we do it, it’s about consistency and performance and we were inconsistent today for the first time all year. We’ll work hard in our preparation and we’ll get back to being more consistent.