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✦ NEWS & NOTES For Kelly, it's a 180-degree turn from his last season in Cincinnati in 2009 when the 12-0 Bearcats won late-season games by scores of 47-45, 49-36 and 45-44 after losing 10 starters on defense from the pre- vious year. The low ratings by the Irish offense are compensated for with a No. 3 national ranking in two crucial areas: scoring de- fense and turnover margin (plus-2.25 with only four by Notre Dame and 13 by its opponents). It's all about managing a football pro- gram to one's strengths. "You go through those times of having a The last time Notre Dame won as many as five games in a row was in 2006, when head coach Charlie Weis' team reeled off eight consecutive victories en route to a 10-1 record. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES • With no game last Saturday, Notre Dame practiced only on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, did weight room work on Thursday and had Friday and Saturday off to rest. The players returned to their football routine on Sunday and had a full-gear two-hour practice this Monday, which is normally their day off. • Notre Dame is the lone team in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) that has yet to trail in a game this year. It is the first time since the 12-1 season in 1989 that the Fighting Irish did not fall behind in their first four games. If Miami fails to take the lead in this Saturday's game, it will mark the first time since 1947 that Notre Dame did not trail through the first five games. • Third-year head coach Brian Kelly has had four different four-game winning streaks at Notre Dame in his 30 games (20-10 overall record), but he has never reached five. A victory this Saturday against the Hurricanes would extend the current winning streak to five, the longest at the program since recording eight straight victories in 2006 to improve to 10-1. Former Irish head coaches Bob Davie, Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis all had eight- PHOTO BY PER KJELDSEN football team where you manage the game accordingly," Kelly said. "We're going to make sure our defense is on a long field. If they're on a long field, they've got a chance to take it away and give us bet- ter field position or turn it back to us. It makes an impact on how you manage or call the game." Sophomore quarterback Everett Golson, Kelly said, will continue to take baby steps in each appearance. "An analogy I like to use is he's still cooking," said Kelly, who replaced Golson with junior Tommy Rees for the final three quarters against Michigan to go the safe route. "We've taken him out of the oven. "He's still learning all of the things that are not necessarily visible from game film." Another analogy Kelly uses is that of game winning streaks in their first two seasons, in 1998, 2002 and 2006, respectively. • Kelly is 12-2 during his career in games when he is coming off a bye week, most regular-season meeting between the two programs since 1990. The Fighting Irish re- corded a 33-17 victory in the 2010 Sun Bowl against the Hurricanes. If Notre Dame defeats Miami this Saturday, it will be its first three-game winning streak against the Hurricanes since 1978-80. recently a 31-17 defeat at home against USC last year. In Kelly's first bye week game at Notre Dame back in 2010, the 4-5 Irish defeated No. 15 Utah 28-3 to begin a four-game winning streak to end the season. • Notre Dame has a 16-7-1 all-time series lead against Miami, but this will be the first a father who is not yet fully comfortable turning over the keys to his car to his re- cently licensed teenaged son. "We ran it fast last year, and you saw what happened — we got a lot of speed- ing tickets," Kelly said of an offense that had 19 turnovers in its five losses. "Clearly we want to be more of an offense that can have big-play capability because we need to score more points … ✦ PAGE 12 "Until we're ready to amp it up, we're going to be careful with the football." Golson did have success with the deep ball in the victories against Purdue and Michigan State — and Miami is yielding an astounding 17.2 yards per completion and 9.7 yards per attempt. The rebuilding Hurricanes defense has been a sieve … but can the Irish offense exploit it? A week of rest allowed Golson to shake a previously unreported shoulder problem. It also gave deep threat wide receiver Da- Varis Daniels, another sophomore in his first season on the field, a chance to fully heal from the ankle sprain that held him back during Notre Dame's past two games. 'HEISMANTI' WATCH While it has become nearly impossible for a defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy — Michigan cornerback Charles Woodson also excelled on offense and special teams when he won it in 1997 over Tennessee quarterback Peyton Manning — Irish senior linebacker Manti Te'o has a legitimate chance to become the first Notre Dame defender to make the top 10 in the balloting since 1977, when end Ross Browner finished fifth. Realistically, head coach Brian Kelly knows that freakish numbers such as the ones West Virginia quarterback Geno Smith posted last week (45-of-51 passing for 656 yards with eight touchdowns and no interceptions) are what will draw the voters' attention. "He's got to have some offensive num- bers or statistics," Kelly said of the Heis- man "unofficially" becoming exclusively an offensive player honor and not neces- sarily presented to the best football player in America, as was the original premise. "But you're also judged by how you im- pact your team and what you do on the defensive side of the ball.