“This is a hard decision”, head coach Brian Kelly said in a release. Before Purdue, he was Florida State’s assistant head coach and linebackers coach from 2010 to 2012.
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VanGorder’s son, Montgomery, is a redshirt sophomore quarterback with the Irish, and Kelly said he addressed the coordinator’s dismissal with the signal-caller immediately. Consider from 1956-63, one of the Dark Ages of Notre Dame football, the Irish concocted scoring defense rankings of 101, 85, 88, 82, 90 and 77. “I’ve got to do a better job of finding out what those things are that are putting our football team in that position”. “We’ll all have that very public interview as we play each and every week”.
Kelly proposed to fix these issues of execution with personnel changes, exempting no position except the long-snapper from scrutiny, making sure to put the players with the most “fire and grit” on the field.
Although Kelly takes blame for his team’s poor performance, the one blame he places on his team is the lack of passion. He said Duke was grittier and more determined than the Irish. One guy. “So, if you want to play for me moving forward, you better – I don’t care what your résumé says, I don’t care if you were a five-star [recruit], if you had 100 tackles or 80 receptions or 30 touchdown passes – you better have some damn fire and energy in you”.
With a vacancy at defensive coordinator, Kelly announced Greg Hudson, the team’s defensive analyst, would assume the role. The interception set up Reed’s 19-yard field goal, as Duke went to work on offense in Irish territory following the pick.
Notre Dame had previously used a timeout on the fourth play of the second half to avoid a penalty for having 12 men on the field. “When DeVon went down, I told him at halftime, ‘We got your back, ‘” Borders said. Notre Dame allowed 50 points in a loss to Texas and 36 points in a loss to Notre Dame. “It starts there. I thought we used the field really well, something that we have needed to do”.
The Irish still have to play Stanford, Miami and Virginia Tech (although all in South Bend) and go to USC to end the regular season. It was the renowned Notre Dame offense, led by Kizer, that failed to do its job and outperform Duke when it mattered most.
Kelly said there will be some tweaks on defensive side of the ball, but “we’re not going to pull the rug from underneath the kids at this point in the season”.
Notre Dame grabbed a 35-28 lead with 7:46 remaining in the fourth quarter when Kizer found wide receiver Equanimeous St. “But that’s the least of my concerns after today”.
“They were all telling me that they had my back and that they knew I was going to get it done for them”, he said. “I believe in my heart that we have the right kind of people, and that’s what you do when you’re the right kind of people”. “But overall, we were executing more consistently than we have been”. “As I got a chance to further evaluate our football team and our current situation I felt that it was in our best interest to make the move that I did”. “We’re not going to touch him, but everybody else in vulnerable”.
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While the Blue Devils weren’t a shut-down unit by any stretch against Notre Dame, they had enough depth to survive and make some big plays in the fourth quarter.
