Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/904117
www.BLUEANDGOLD.com NOV. 27, 2017 11 UNDER THE DOME For Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly, the bitterness of the 41-8 shellacking at Miami to drop to No. 8 in the College Football Playoff rankings Nov. 14 was not neces- sarily the end to what the preseason objective was. "We just have had one mission, and that is to play to a standard," Kelly said. "… It's really refocusing on the standard and not worrying about all of those other things that seem to have maybe gotten us off our process." Unfortunately, there have been a lot of bumps in the night on the road for the Fighting Irish since the 42-14 loss to Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game on Jan. 7, 2013. In the five seasons since then (2013-17), Notre Dame is 1-6 in night games on a ranked opponent's home field (no neutral sites). The lone victory came at No. 21 Tem- ple on Oct. 31, 2015, when quarterback DeShone Kizer found Will Fuller for the game-winning touchdown pass with 2:09 left to eke out a 24-20 victory. In fairness, many of the games were competitive, including the highly controversial 31-27 loss at No. 2 Florida State in 2014. Still, the low percentage of wins since that Alabama game in prime time on the road has added to Notre Dame's perceived inability to win "big ones." The fact that Miami was Notre Dame's first road game in five weeks was not a huge factor to Kelly, noting how the Irish converted a couple of third-down plays on the game's opening series (including third-and-10) and had an open 35-yard touchdown pass to junior wide receiver Equanimeous St. Brown sail just past his fingertips. "We converted a third-and-10 versus an overload blitz," Kelly said of the first series. "We communicated well. We need to obviously complete that touchdown opportunity." Was Notre Dame intimidated, or was the moment too big again? If anything, Kelly felt the team was amped. "I didn't do maybe my best work at settling our team down," Kelly said. "With the moment being so big for so many guys, they used a lot of energy. That's the only thing if I had to do it all over again. … When you have a night that doesn't come up like that, you don't expect it. "But offensively I didn't feel like the noise or the situ- ation — we didn't execute very well, and we turned it over. That was my biggest concern." Senior rover and team captain Drue Tranquill agreed that the hostile environment on the road hurt not from an intimidation aspect, but in losing sight of one's concen- tration while basking in the us-against-world mentality. "When you're on the road and in a hostile environ- ment, I think in the way it hurts you is it becomes dis- tracting, and guys are almost like 'Oh, yeah, bring it on, bring it on' instead of focusing on their execution," Tran- quill said. "It's kind of like this idea of maybe getting caught up in the hype instead of focusing on the details that actually allow you to win college football games." Bumps In The Night The 41-8 loss at then-No. 7 Miami Nov. 11 dropped head coach Brian Kelly and the Irish to 1-6 in night games on a ranked opponent's home field since the start of the 2013 season. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA