Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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coach, but also loving his players. "He's an aggressive coordinator in general schematically. He challenges us to play aggressively and come off the ball. That's the biggest thing." Those players combined to hold Stanford to 47 rushing yards on 32 car- ries, one week after limiting a potent Syracuse rushing attack to 93 rushing yards on 29 carries when you exclude the 42-yard fake punt. "We do a great job game planning and preparing and understanding how they're going to attack us as an offense, and everybody is accountable for what his job is," senior linebacker Joe Schmidt said. "We do a really good job of knowing different personnel and how to play them." Schmidt, the former walk-on who rose to the Irish starting lineup last spring, had plenty of doubters who felt he was neither athletic enough nor strong enough to succeed on the Irish defense. From spring practice, when Kelly said Notre Dame couldn't afford to take him off the field, through the first half of the 2014 season, he has more than proven his value. "We felt like with player develop- ment, that Joe had a chance to be suc- cessful here at Notre Dame, or we would not have invited him into the program as a walk-on, and a lot of that has to do with Joe, as well," said Kelly, who has a strong track record with walk-ons. "He's put in his time. He's developed physically and mentally and we've done a really good job of bringing him along, so both parties working together has gotten him to this point." In 2012, when the Irish led the na- tion in scoring defense during the regular season, an inexperienced pass defense held up their end of the bar- gain while a dominant front seven led the way. This year, the front seven was the perceived weakness of the group, but it too allowed Notre Dame to form a top-five defense. "In developing your program, you can never leave yourself short in re- cruiting, and so we worked really hard at making sure that we had enough pieces [along the front seven]," Kelly said. "Even though sometimes you feel like you'd like one more guy here or there in a recruiting cycle, it's never just one year. It's the four or five years together that make that depth happen. And then you have to develop your guys at those positions. "As it relates to the defensive line, we felt like we had enough guys there that they're going to be able to give us the kind of play necessary. It was just a matter of giving them the op- portunity." Notre Dame, one of three defenses to not allow more than 17 points dur- ing the first five games of the season, faces a difficult remaining schedule, with Florida State's Karlos Williams, Navy's triple option that can give any defense fits, as well as talented run- ning backs such as USC's Javorius Al- len and Arizona State's D.J. Foster. "Defending the run is [about] your front seven, so just being tough in the front seven and doing what you're supposed to do, and gap integrity," Rochell said. Notre Dame's success will depend on how it lives up to the tenets of Van- Gorder's instruction. ✦