Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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IN THE TRENCHES ANDREW OWENS "At that point, it was a coin toss of [going for] one or two," Kelly ex- plained. "So we decided to go for two." The two-point try failed and later doomed the Irish, even if Kelly would not admit so in his postgame press conference. He offered that Notre Dame's chart would recommend kick- ing the point after, but he wanted to avoid using a struggling kicking unit. That concern was fair, considering Northwestern blocked an extra point in the first quarter and returned it for two points following a poor hold by sophomore quarterback Malik Zaire, who was in his first week of hold- ing duties. Despite the recent kick- ing drama, it remained Notre Dame's higher-percentage option. (Not to mention the Irish had converted three successful tries in a row following the block.) "In retrospect — there's no advan- tage in retrospect," Kelly said. "We felt at the time with the struggles in the kicking game that we would have a good opportunity in the two-point play that we picked, and we felt very confident that we would be success- ful." Later, Kelly made another puzzling decision. Protecting a 40-37 lead with 1:36 remaining, Notre Dame had a sec- ond-and-eight from the Northwestern 31-yard line. The Wildcats had used each of their timeouts, so the Irish would leave no more than 20 seconds on the clock had they simply kneeled it twice and pooch punted. Instead, Kelly called running back Cam Mc- Daniel's number and the senior fum- bled. Ten plays later, Northwestern forced overtime and went on to win. "No, I did not," Kelly replied when asked if he considered kneeling. "I don't know that I've ever in my college career taken a knee and then punted the football," Kelly added later. "We would have run the ball once at least and then considered our options from there." When asked whether he thought out the math ahead of time, Kelly said he did and that "somebody upstairs gives us that." At 7-3, the Irish have lost three of four contests for the first time since the head coach's first four games after taking the job. It's the type of loss that shakes a program. Kelly repeated a common refrain from the 2010-11 seasons that has not been relevant to the program lately: "You can't start winning until you stop losing." This late-season loss parallels the 28-27 defeat to Tulsa in 2010, when Kelly asked his freshman quarterback to take a chance at the end zone de- spite his Irish already being in field goal position. The gamble failed, with Tulsa intercepting Tommy Rees and clinching the victory. "Get used to it," Kelly said after- wards of his aggressive style. Just like on that occasion, after this loss fans are left wondering, "Why is it not all on Kelly?" ✦ Andrew Owens has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since August 2013. He can be reached at aowens@blueandgold.com