Notre Dame Fighting Irish College Football Pregame Quote, 12/05/2021

Welcome, everybody, to the 2021-22 PlayStation Fiesta Bowl Selection Day press conferences with our coaches. We’re excited about the matchup that was announced earlier today between No. 5 Notre Dame and No. 9 Oklahoma State. One of the beautiful things about Bowl Season is you get some unique matchups. And this year’s matchup between Notre Dame and Oklahoma State with these two storied programs is the first time these teams will ever meet in football. We’re really excited about that. January 1, a Saturday morning, 11:00 a.m. local time. It will be a little bit of an early wake-up call for everyone who is coming out here to Arizona, but we couldn’t be more excited. First up is Notre Dame Coach Tommy Rees, welcome to Arizona, and please take it away.

Thanks, Scott. The weather doesn’t feel quite like Arizona yet, but I’m sure we’ll get there soon enough. I just think on behalf of the entire program here, we just want to thank the Fiesta Bowl for having us in this game, and we’re excited to represent such an historic bowl game in a great manner.

Look, we’ve got a great opponent ahead of us in Oklahoma State. We know it presents a great challenge, but I think our entire program is extremely excited to get back out there on the field and get practice in in preparation for another great game. So with that, I would like to open it up for questions and get rolling here.

Do you have any information regarding Kyle Hamilton’s health and possible availability for this game?

I think a lot of those questions, I think [Coach] Marcus [Freeman] is going to be prepared to field tomorrow. You know, I’d really like to focus on just our preparation for this game in specific and, you know, I don’t have the medical update for Kyle at this time.

How much have you been able to check out Oklahoma State? Were you able to watch them at all yesterday? And what do you know about their defense?

Yeah, we’ve heard about Oklahoma State all year. And I know a lot of the conversation has been about how strong their defense has been playing. You know, I think, over the last 10 years or so, when you think about that program, you think of offense first, right?

But I think Coach [Jim] Knowles has done a great job preparing them. I think they’re second in the country on third down and third in the country in total defense. Obviously, yesterday was really my first opportunity to sit down and watch them play.

I’ve gotten a little bit ahead today on some film and just looking at them early on. They present a lot of challenges. They do a lot of different things defensively. They’re very multiple in their front and their coverages. They definitely present a great challenge for us, one that we’re going to have to be prepared for, especially given the time that they’re going to have to prepare. We’re going to have to really dive into who they are and what they do and how we want to answer some of those issues that they present.

You have sort of a large group of younger players, freshmen in particular, who improved throughout the course of this season. What kind of an opportunity is this for them to continue to sort of develop, but also go against a defense comparable to a Wisconsin or a Cincinnati in terms of their production, you know, where maybe they didn’t have that opportunity earlier in the season because they weren’t ready for it?

To be quite honest with you, it gives us a great opportunity offensively to kind of figure out where we’re at. This is a barometer game for us, where we’ve felt the steady improvement throughout the year, and now we get to go against a great defense and see how much we’ve improved.

I think when you look at ‚Äì you know, you mentioned Wisconsin and Cincinnati. Those were a couple of the games early where, to be quite frank, we weren’t playing our best football offensively. As we got to that point later in the season, now we have an opportunity for that group of guys to go against a great defense ‚Äì not a good one, but a great defense ‚Äì to really see how we stack up.

 Just talk about, did you get a chance ‚Äì Notre Dame doesn’t play a lot of Big 12 teams a lot. What do you see playing against a Big 12 team, because their offense, it seems like they play, like, street football. You go to the mailbox and make a left and forget about defense.

Yeah, I think that’s flipped a little bit, to be honest. I think when you watch Big 12 football now, you see a lot of great defense being played. I think a lot of the new wave of defensive football has been kind of that 3-3-5 structure that you saw from Iowa State when we played them in the bowl game, and I think the conference has been very innovative that way because they’ve had to stop high-powered offenses.

You see a lot of what they’ve implemented in that conference trickle over across college football. I think the defense in that conference has been played at a very high level over the last two years, and we’re excited for the challenge.

You know, it’s not a conference that we play a whole lot. Like I said, a couple years ago in the bowl game, when I was a player, we got to play Oklahoma a couple of times, and those were great matchups. So we’re definitely excited to get this opportunity and eager to ‚Äì you know, these are what Bowl games are for, right? You get to play matchups you don’t typically get to play. And for us to play in this big of a game against an opponent like Oklahoma State who’s nationally in the conversation every year, we’re extremely excited for that opportunity.

Just looking at the last couple of days since all the players found out about [Coach] Marcus [Freeman], what kind of energy have you seen from them just from what his presence what that meant to them and how that kind of might carry you guys through this month of bowl prep?

Yeah, obviously, you’ve seen the program. I know the word “rally” is used a lot around Notre Dame, but you’ve really seen the program rally around one another in the last five days. I have not been around the team a whole lot since we’ve been traveling recruiting. But you see the videos, you see the reaction. Certainly, I’ve had plenty of conversations with guys on the team just about the excitement and the energy and, hey, we haven’t felt this in the program before, this excitement and support for one another.

They talk about their workouts this week with Coach (Matt) Balis and just how much energy and drive there was through that. I think you’re going to get a team that’s extremely hungry. I think you’re getting a team that’s going to be extremely motivated to go out there and play their best football.

Look, the other thing about Bowl games is it’s another opportunity to continue to improve. We get bonus practices here so you can continue to develop a lot of young guys. I think we’re going to get a lot of really competitive practices. I think you’re going to have guys ‚Äì unlike some years when you’re prepping for a Bowl game, you’re going to get guys that are really motivated to go out there and play their best ball. I’m really looking forward to the energy that this entire week has brought the program and continuing to build off of that.

You guys, I remember back during the bye week in the middle of the season, you guys talked about how there was a lot of self-scouting that went on. How much self-scouting will you guys do in preparation for this? And what’s the difference in focus and structure between, like, in-season preparation for games when it’s back to back and then when you do have a little bit of a time-off and an extra week to prepare for a bowl game?

It will be very similar ‚Äì you know, you split the season into kind of two parts ‚Äì first half, second half. We’ll self-scout very similar to how we did over the bye week. We’ll look at tendencies. We’ll look at some areas where we need to improve. We’ll look at some areas where we’ve been successful and why that’s been and try to find patterns or trends there, maybe try to find a few trends that you can break.

In terms of preparations, really, the only change is you probably don’t dive right into game planning your first couple practices. You know, we’ll be on the road all week recruiting, and then we’ll come off the road and start practice. And there won’t be a whole lot of time as the staff to get together beforehand.

You’ll have some good-on-good periods, which is a little bit different than a normal game week. You’ll certainly have some opportunities to get some developmental periods in for the younger guys in the program and people that are either registered or still in the developmental phase.

Bowl prep really gives you an opportunity to continue to improve your roster from the top down, and then you get into game plan as you head into the last two weeks or 10 days heading into the game.

I think a lot of people are familiar with [Coach] Mike Gundy because he’s been the head coach there for 17 years, but you may have been even playing at a time when he was already a head coach. But the name, the hot name on their staff has been Jim Knowles, the defensive coordinator. You mentioned how defense has changed in the Big 12. Are you familiar at all with Jim Knowles or seen any of his work through the years?

You know, there were some times there back when I was a player and then when I first got hired; so I remember him at Duke. Like I said, we don’t see a ton of Oklahoma State in crossover; we just don’t often play a similar schedule. We don’t see it a whole lot.

But I have followed him a little bit this year and, obviously, we got a chance to watch him yesterday and a little bit of prep in the last couple of hours here. I know they’re multiple in what they do defensively. They present a lot of different challenges.

The thing that’s intriguing when you look at their numbers and they’re only giving up 26% on third down, that’s an area where, if you’re not good on third down, it’s hard to win games. So that’s an area where I feel like it’s going to be critical in our matchup.

Obviously, [Malcolm] Rodriguez is a great player. They highlighted him yesterday throughout the broadcast and the game. You know, on total defense, they were third. They’re giving up less than 100 yards in rushing this year. There’s a lot of challenges that Coach [Jim] Knowles presents. I think he does a great job in the early diagnosis of figuring out what teams do well and having answers for that.

I think he’s going to play tendencies and try to make sure that he answers our core principles of offense. We’re going to have to understand that and make sure that we can play complementary football.

A week ago, you would have assumed Brian Kelly was coaching this game; instead, it’s Marcus Freeman. So with having a new coach, particularly one whose background is on the defensive side of the ball, does this change at all the way you go about designing a game plan or input you seek or anything along those lines?

I don’t think so. I think our process will stay pretty consistent with how it’s been all year in terms of how we approach a game plan week. I think we have a great staff in place offensively that has worked in a well, cohesive way all year.

Obviously, Coach [Marcus] Freeman now being the head coach and just the conversations with him during the week, you know, about playing complementary football, understanding situationally, his preference may be different than Coach [Brian] Kelly’s were.

And so that’s something that, over the next couple of weeks, he and I will have conversations on and make sure that we’re on the same page and make sure that we’re playing as an entire team, not just two sides of the ball or three sides of the ball, you know, as an entire team, that we’re playing football the way Coach [Marcus] Freeman wants it played.

I’m excited to get to work. I’m excited to get to work with [Coach] Marcus [Freeman]. Like you said, it’s only been a week. It felt about a month in the last seven days. I think, as an entire program, we’re very eager for this opportunity and very eager to get back into football mode here.

I was interested in sort of how you watched the games yesterday. You know, there was kind of a unique amount of stuff on the line for Notre Dame. The results went the way that they went. Just sort of how you took in Saturday as you’re figuring out, okay, where is Notre Dame going to go, are they going to make the playoff or not?

To be honest with you, I just tried to enjoy watching a bunch of really good games of football. I think a lot of those are completely out of our control. You know, obviously, for us, we knew which games had impact on where we were going to land, but I was just very intrigued. You have very few opportunities to sit down and watch games and really enjoy them. And for us, that work in football, to have that opportunity was unique yesterday.

So, for me, it was just about taking them in. It was completely out of our control. Just having an opportunity to see a bunch of really good games played and understand that some teams were potential opponents. Some games had huge implications for us and where we were going to be in the postseason, but I tried to stay relaxed and calm and not get too emotionally engaged in some of those games and really just take in some great football being played on a college football Saturday.

Again, I know this may be a question you can’t answer, but how is the staff kind of settling between Coach [Brian] Kelly going to LSU, and I’m sure there’s some people that may be going with him. How is that kind of being meted out at this point?

I think Coach [Marcus] Freeman has got his press conference tomorrow, and a lot of those questions will be directed for him. But I think the staff cohesion is in a healthy place right now. But outside of that, I want to let Marcus handle some of those opportunities to answer those questions.