Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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them be able to go out there like wild men." Playing to help your defense is uncharted ter- ritory for Kelly. He typi- cally treated the foot- ball like a hot potato at Cincinnati. The Bearcats finished dead last in the country in time of pos- session during Kelly's final season as head coach. They also went 12-0 that year, which explains why Kelly isn't completely comfortable at the relative snail's pace of his currently un- defeated group. The coach pushed try, only three take more than 23 seconds to com- plete an average play. Baylor leads the coun- try with an average of 18.4 seconds, a few ticks slower than where they were with Heisman Tro- phy winner Robert Grif- fin III last season. Notre Dame has got- ten progressively slower on offense since Kelly's his team to pick up the tempo in practice the week after beating Okla- homa. "We want our time of possession to equal a certain amount of plays, and we're falling a little behind that ma- trix," Kelly said. "We re- ally need to continue to possess the football, but we've got to run [more] plays." The Irish are averag- 8. South Carolina 65.44 9. Florida State 68.11 10. Louisville 6. Georgia 7. Florida 2. Kansas State 63.00 3. Notre Dame 66.875 4. Oregon 5. LSU 1. Alabama 67.375 66.75 65.25 82.00 68.125 ing one play every 29 seconds of offensive pos- session time this season. The top offenses in the country typically hover a little above 20 seconds. Out of the top 10 scor- ing offenses in the coun- first season. The Irish dropped from 24.3 sec- onds in 2010 to 25.7 seconds last season be- fore nearly reaching the 30-second mark in the first eight games of this year. A new quarterback and frequently rotat- ing personnel make it harder for the offense to keep pace. They also have a tendency to check more plays at the line of Per Game Per Play Possession 64.375 Plays Seconds 31:00 30:32 29:04 20:30 30:00 29:31 34:04 29:21 30:02 32:19 Time Of 33:16 31:50 32:22 16:45 26:72 25:90 31:33 26:91 26:46 28:46 get our quarterback not walking around out there. He's gotta get out there, and he's gotta move a little bit quicker." First-year starter Ev- erett Golson needed to take his time at first. The sophomore slowed down to make sure he was reading a defense properly and checking into the right protections for his offensive line- scrimmage, especially with junior Tommy Rees at quarterback, than the teams that are racking up 40 or more points per game such as Baylor and Oregon. "Some of it's coach- ing, and the other part of it is we've gotta run some plays that you don't check," Kelly said. "Then we've gotta TOP 10 BCS TEAMS' BALL CONTROL (As of Nov. 2) Rk. Team