Brian Kelly’s Notre Dame Irish lost to Georgia Saturday night 23-17 in front of a loud and disruptive crowd at Sanford Stadium.
Notre Dame committed a Kelly era-high 12 penalties, and the crowd was clearly a major factor.
It was one of the most physical games Kelly’s ever coached, he said after the game. The Irish had a chance to win the game on the last drive, but Georgia’s defense broke up the pass.
Kelly spoke to the media following the Irish’s loss to the Bulldogs, and here’s everything he said about Georgia:
Kelly’s thoughts on the game
“Disappointed locker room, Certainly, you don’t come down here to play these games and feel good after a physical game like that, when you come up short. Congratulations to Georgia. They’re good football team, obviously. It was a physical game, both sides of the ball. You could hear it out there. The physicality was was real. Probably one of the most physical games that I’ve coached against any team that I’ve had compete. That’s a lot of games that I’ve coached. The physicality was real. Georgia made a couple more plays than we did. I know, these are some like cliches, but when you break it down, our guys fought to the very end, they made a couple more plays. We got a coach a little bit better. We’ve got to make a couple more plays. That was really the difference.”
Sanford Stadium’s environment
“We practiced in a louder environment. We’re very disappointed that we didn’t handle it better. It was more of coaching. I think we needed to do a better job of silent cadence longer. They handled it so quickly and so easily, but the repetition on the clap, which is our cadence, was so ingrained that when we went to silent cadence, they had forgotten and went back to the class, and so I should have taken that into consideration and just forced them to be in it longer. I’ll take responsibility for that.”
On Georgia’s depth
“They came back in waves. I think where they struggled a little bit was all of the injuries in the back end of their defense. Upfront, we’re trying to match and trying to figure out what’s going to come onto the field and it’s three down, it’s four down, it’s different personnel groupings, it’s more depth than we’ve seen in a long time.”
On Jake Fromm’s performance
“The arm is is a lot liver than it was when we saw him a couple years ago and the decision making, it’s outstanding. He doesn’t put the ball in a position where it’s going to be turned over. His back shoulder throws were very difficult for Troy Pride Jr. to defend and we stayed on the back hip of the defender. He put it low back shoulder. They had to make some great catches and they did. Give Georgia credit. They made great catches on those. They weren’t in stride, running, back shoulder catches. They had to go down on the ground and make great catches and Troy’s a pretty good defender and he didn’t have much of a chance, so that’s that’s really good quarterback play.”
You can watch Kelly’s full press conference below:
Saturday Down South reports and comments on the news around the Southeastern Conference as well as larger college football topics.
