by Leprechaun Express & Steve Welsh
Notre Dame Head Coach Brian Kelly and Jack Nolan cover some of the latest developments with Notre Dame football, including recapping the Texas game and looking ahead to Nevada. Nolan also sits down with Irish defensive back Shaun Crawford.
Notre Dame did some good things offensively against Texas, but in the end the Irish offense could not capitalize on enough opportunities to win … Kizer was able to move the offense much better than Zaire, leading the Irish to all six of its touchdown drives. He made plays with his arm (215 yards, 5 TD’s) and legs (77 yards, 1 TD). Kizer was more than willing to attack tight windows … It was not a perfect performance … the Irish quarterback left too many yards on the table …. All in all, Kizer played very good football, but moving forward he will have to clean up some mechanical and read issues.
Brian Kelly meets with the press after Notre Dame’s season-opening 2OT loss at Texas.
Click here for Notre Dame post-game quotes.
Some video clips of a just a few of the big plays from Notre Dame’s game at Texas on Sunday night.
… a problem that was obvious (the defense) long before fall camp began, has reached crisis level … Fix it now or brace for a free-fall. … in six years under Kelly, Notre Dame is 3-3 in the second game of the season – and two of those wins were last-minute escapes from lower-caliber foes …. Even though Nevada barely escaped from Cal Poly, an FCS team, in overtime last Friday, the Wolf Pack has a potent running game.
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Texas’ hurry-up offense had a staggering 86 plays, including the two periods of bonus football. Notre Dame had 76 offensive snaps. … Even when they did get to third down, the Longhorns weren’t bad (8 of 18). … numbers … bad enough to cause a panic. …
The Irish allowed 517 yards, an average of 6 per play. Its secondary was beat time and again. … a Notre Dame Kelly-coached team lost for the first time to an unranked team while in the top 10 in 21 opportunities. … a freshman quarterback, Shane Buechele … torch[ed] them for 280 yards and two touchdowns. They couldn’t tackle … backup quarterback Tyrone Swoopes when it counted.
The back of its defense, one again, was beat for big play after big play.
‘We gotta coach better,’ Kelly said. ‘It starts with me and our staff coaching better. Then our players have to do their job. ….’
… Texas safety DeShon Elliott delivered a blow to [Torii Hunter, Jr.’s] head as Hunter tried to haul in a DeShone Kizer pass in the end zone. … More stunning than the hit may have been the lack of replay from the officiating crew. Even though a targeting penalty wasn’t initially called on the field, the replay official could have overruled officials on the field. The NCAA rulebook … states the replay official ‘may create a targeting foul, but only in egregious instance in which a foul is not called by the officials on the field. Such a review may not be initiated by a coach’s challenge.’ … [Notre Dame Head Coach] Brian Kelly … described his discussions with the officials as ‘heated’ …. on-field officials never signaled that replay official Richard Jordan had called the play under review. ‘It wasn’t even reviewed, which just doesn’t make any sense to me,’ Kelly said. ‘I’ve been in this game a long time, and I know when somebody gets hit in the head. He certainly was hit in the head on that play in the end zone. It’s just unfortunate that it wasn’t officiated or reviewed in a manner that I thought it should have been.’
The 10th-ranked University of Notre Dame football team (0-1) rallied from a second-half 17-point deficit, but fell in double overtime to Texas (1-0), 50-47…. a back and forth battle all evening in front of a Texas record crowd of 102,315. … The Irish will return home to face Nevada in Notre Dame Stadium … Sept. 10, 2016 at 3:30 p.m. ET on NBC …. There were plenty of candidates for ‘the play of the game’ in a two-overtime thriller. Kizer’s 29-yard touchdown run, his drop-in-a-bucket 17-yard touchdown pass to Josh Adams to put the Irish ahead 35-31, or Isaac Rochell’s key tackle-for-a-loss on third down a 14:02 in the fourth quarter to get the Irish the ball to set the stage for the Kizer-to-Adams hook up, but there is little doubt as to the definitive play of the game: Shaun Crawford’s 98-yard blocked point-after-touchdown return for two points to tie the game at 37-37. … [There were] [n]o turnovers for Notre Dame.
Notre Dame fights back to tie the score 14-14 at Texas late in the first half, with an electric, acrobatic 30-yard touchdown pass from DeShone Kizer to Equanimeous St. Brown, their second of the game, with 3:44 to go in the half. Kizer hits St. Brown in mid-stride around the Texas 4, with St. Brown flying forward off a hit from a Texas defender, then doing a somersault off his hand to flip into the end zone.
TOUCHDOWN IRISH!
Equanimeous St. Brown scores his second career TD & second of the game
#10 ND 14 | 14
2nd Quarter pic.twitter.com/z0fyAwLnkN— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) September 5, 2016
Equanimeous St. Brown LITERALLY just did a one-handed TD cartwheel to tie the game! pic.twitter.com/Ja4hfcFQGz
— ESPN CollegeFootball (@ESPNCFB) September 5, 2016