Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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"They played outside leverage when we use that formation, so that was in our game plan," Fuller said. The plan, according to Kelly, was to lean on his team's athletic advantage in the first week and not let his young players on both sides of the ball get overwhelmed with thinking about the game. That two-play sequence cap- tured the strategy's success. Not thinking was a luxury the Irish couldn't afford during much of the past month. Mired in an academic fraud investigation that cost the team five of its players (three of them starters) for an indefinite amount of time, Kelly said his team never lost focus on their goals on the field. The team was a dealt another blow two days before kickoff when cap- tain and veteran safety Austin Col- linsworth strained a ligament in his knee. With Collinsworth watching from the sidelines, Notre Dame's young group, running its 4-3 scheme for the first time, held Rice's offense to less than 300 yards before the sec- ond-stringers took over in the fourth quarter. "I think as a team we did a really good job of making sure we were all on point," said linebacker Joe Schmidt, who led the defense with eight tackles. "There are always going to be distrac- tions. People are going to be saying that we should look at this, look at that. This guy's not here. This guy got hurt. We're always going to be faced with adversity." Those distractions were dragged into the shadows for at least one night by a shining performance by Golson. The senior added an obvious new gear to an offense that will need to continue to post big numbers to keep Notre Dame in the win column. Kelly said the roll-the- ball-out-and-play approach that toppled Rice won't be enough to get through the Senior defensive back Matthias Farley made five tackles and intercepted a pass late in the first half that set up the score that helped the Irish break the game open. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA