Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/396685
UNDER THE DOME "The most basketball I play now is on the Pop-A-Shot." — Senior quarterback Everett Golson on his first love, basketball, which he was once recruited to play at North Carolina "That's easy. We've got No. 5 in the backfield. Everett makes all of us better." — Senior running back Cam McDaniel on why the Irish running game has improved this season, referencing Golson's all-around effect "Go ahead and call the Fighting Irish overrated. We'll find out how good Notre Dame really is when it plays at No. 1 Florida State in two weeks. So far, the Irish look ahead of schedule with a 5-0 start after Saturday's win over Stanford. Quarterback Everett Golson continues to play well and is now 15-1 as Notre Dame's starting quarterback, the best winning percentage in school history." — ESPN.com's Mark Schla- bach in his weekly "Eliminator" column identifying the remaining College Football Playoff contenders TWEET OF THE WEEK @KLM_89: "Hunter Smith that's the way to respond bro. Worry about the next play…" — Former Notre Dame defensive lineman and captain Kapron Lewis-Moore (2008-12) following Notre Dame's 17-14 win over Stanford, the margin of victory coming on a field goal held by Irish junior Hunter Smith, who had muffed two holds earlier in the game THE BEAUTY OF A FOUR‑YARD RUN Although sophomore Greg Bryant was Notre Dame's top rusher through the first five games with 188 yards and 4.8 yards per carry, Kelly indicated that he has the most overall work to do among the running backs to earn more reps in the offense. In the same way that teaching a quarterback that sometimes an incomplete pass is the best route to go, the main steps with Bryant is to have him appreciate the value of a four-yard gain — instead of trying to make it 40 and ending up with zero or on the minus side. His eagerness to make a play each time he has the ball becomes forced and thereby inhibiting. A prime case was a second-quarter one-on-one run versus Stanford against safety Jordan Richards in which he might have been able to pick up seven or more yards but was limited to four with too many dance moves. The same occurred on a couple of kickoff returns a week earlier versus Syracuse. "He'll be an outstanding player for us," Kelly said of Bryant. "It's just, I think every - body wants it to happen right away. He wants everything to be a big play. "Stick your foot in the ground and go north and south. … Lower your pads, run through the tackle, get us four yards. … Sometimes that's hard when you're 19 and you're used to getting 40 every time you touch it."