Tag: Fighting Irish Footbal

Notre Dame Week 5 highlight: Riley Leonard airs it out

Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard hits a big touchdown pass against Louisville.

Shortly after the Notre Dame Fighting Irish recovered a huge fumble against the Louisville Cardinals, Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard found a wide-open Jaden Greathouse for a 34-yard touchdown pass.

This capped a 4-play, 53-yard touchdown drive that also featured a 16-yard run from Irish running back Jadarian Price. The drive took 2:05 off the clock.

The score gave the Fighting Irish a 14-7 lead with 4:59 remaining in the first quarter.

Notre Dame needed a fast start after struggling early in every game except the blowout over Purdue, and so far the Irish have achieved that.

 

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Kelly’s halftime speech shows change in Notre Dame’s program

Notre Dame’s head football coach Brian Kelly gave a inspiring halftime speech that resonates loudly where the program is headed.

In college football there is a certain mentality that you have to have to consistently be among the best in the country. There are a few teams, that regardless of returning experience, they’ll always have high level of play. Take Alabama for instance, they consistently lose players to the NFL early, but just keep churning out teams that compete for National Championships every year.

How about Oklahoma? Four straight years, including this one, with different starting quarterbacks, same result. Each year they’ve won the Big XII, after one game they’re viewed as the favorite again this year.

It isn’t a coincidence that these programs are almost always in the CFP. It’s in their programs DNA, it’s just what they do.

After seeing this from Irish coach Brian Kelly, I feel like they are trending towards having the culture that the elite, of the elite schools do.

“We’re scoring every time we got the football. We’re not letting them score any points. We want a shutout. We’re playing for a shutout. This thing is too damn hard. I’m tired of being the nice guy.” If this didn’t pump you up, somethings wrong with you.

Back to the message, it’s about a mentality, a focus, one that might have been missing during the early years of Kelly’s tenure. The killer instinct, a change in culture, in urgency, in everything.

Back in 2019, Kelly spoke of coaching for five more years, with his newly signed extension, that brings him to exactly that time frame. You think that Kelly wants to get a championship before the extension is up? You bet your ass he does. This change in mentality is a step in that direction.