Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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change and because you're playing all these different styles of offense, it just requires a lot of different profiled play- ers, so to speak," he said. "Big D-line- men can't all be big because they're going to go out and play teams that might run 90 plays against us. They can't come close to that. "That part of it we're trying to look at as we evolve. We have many dif- ferent kinds of players in position to fit the abilities to play these kinds of offenses." Head coach Brian Kelly spent the spring claiming that the necessary adjustments had been made to bring Notre Dame up to speed against fast- paced looks. VanGorder assures Irish fans of the same. Now, time will tell. CREATING A PASS RUSH Generating a pass rush is one of the key storylines heading into 2015. A year ago, the Irish finished 70th in the nation in sacks (26.0). A lack of consis- tent pressure on opposing signal call- ers also contributed to forcing only 23 turnovers in all of 2014. "For sure," junior defensive end Isaac Rochell said when asked if the team has improved with its pass rush. "We worked the whole offseason on pass rush. I never really thought we struggled that much with the run, but I felt like pass rush was a place where we struggled, so we focused on that the whole offseason. Then at camp [defensive line coach Keith] Gilmore puts us through really good drills. It's really been productive. "We've been working on our get- offs. Really focusing on our first step, and obviously with Gilmore he's got us doing a lot. We're doing the hand combative stuff. From a technical standpoint, we've been working on a whole lot of technique with Coach [Keith] Gilmore." Each day in practice, Rochell has the opportunity to go up against one of the top left tackles in the nation, Ronnie Stanley, in order to develop his craft. "He's a really good offensive tackle," he said. "It's an opportunity to know Junior defensive end Isaac Rochell recorded 2.5 of Notre Dame's 26 sacks last season, a total that ranked just 70th in the nation. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA