Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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spective on offense, which I think is beneficial," he said. "The second piece is really everything I've learned from Coach Kelly when I worked for him the first time, even though I wasn't on offense. I asked him a lot of questions about why, why, why, because there are things you don't understand unless you've been there and done that. "When I took over for him when he left the first time, we basically ran his offense." a simple rule that offense is about "players not plays." The objective is not about schemat- Martin said both he and Kelly have 'PLAYERS NOT PLAYS' ics because there isn't a coach worth his salt in the country — from high school to the NFL — who doesn't understand X's and O's. It's about getting the ball to your best players in the most advantageous positions. "He didn't necessarily focus on, 'I'm going to come up with another pretty pass route.'" said Martin, downplaying stereotypes about the mad scientist offensive gurus draw- ing up masterful new plays. "The one thing is we kept getting the ball to our best players in the best positions and then they'd make plays — and all of a sudden you write nice things about us." Notre Dame last year was able to spread the field horizontally, especially with bubble screens, but without an op- tion threat, the play-action not really fooling many defenses, and almost no long passes to speak of, opposing defenses could better hone in and stifle the offense that was so limited and challenged vertically. After all, the purpose of the "spread" is to wear the defense out with a quick, no- huddle tempo. Martin points out that of Notre Dame's 302 pass completions last year, only two went for more than 40 yards. "The other thing for us is making them defend the length and width of the field," Martin said. "He was kind of chang- Senior left tackle Zack Martin returns to an offensive line that helped produce 160.38 rushing yards per game in 2011 — the best production since 2001, when ND averaged 188.8 yards per game. all the different things he did with formations I learned from him — and I was on the other side of it [on defense]. I was like 'This is a pain, spreading the field.' " Passing Andrew Hendrix Rushing Tommy Rees Cierre Wood Theo Riddick CAREER STATISTICS ENTERING 2012 575 37 .642 .486 5,034 249 Andrew Hendrix George Atkinson John Goodman Robby Toma Cam McDaniel Tommy Rees Theo Riddick TJ Jones Receiving Tyler Eifert ing to the spread when I got hired the first time and all of the stuff about defending the length and the width of the field came from him, and 26 APRIL 2012 Cierre Wood Robby Toma John Goodman George Atkinson Alex Welch Ben Koyack 43 -58 12.00 3.00 -1.34 5.07 4.66 6.48 3.00 5.33 12.83 10.63 11.01 7.64 12 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 10.47 11.25 10.00 8.00 5.00 7 6 6 2 1 1 0 0 0 36 1 1,705 252 162 27 16 12 9 55 24 78 15 13 12 12 8 PHOTO BY JOE RAYMOND Comp. Att. Pct. Yds. TD INT 369 18 22 2 Att. Yds. Avg. TD Long 336 54 25 9 3 1 3 Rec. Yds. Avg. TD Long 90 84 61 47 36 28 1 1 1 1,155 893 672 359 377 315 10 8 5 39 45 53 31 27 64 10 8 5 There are whispers that under Martin Notre Dame will run the ball more or emphasize greater physical- ity. Others say he will incorporate the hurry-up pace that used to be Kelly's hallmark before he had to ad- just at Notre Dame. Such chatter is irrelevant and meaningless to Martin, whose role will be judged pri- marily on execution and the bottom line of victories. "He trusts my leadership, trusts I will get them to ex- ecute at a high level all the time," Martin summarized. "He knows I don't really care how we get to the end result, but we're going to get there. "He trusts always to find a way to win the game, and not push it to throw it or to run it, or create this stat or that stat. Whatever we need to win, he knows the guy that he trusts right below him in the trenches is going to be giv- ing [him] information that will help us win games." ✦ BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED