After Notre Dame's loss today, Head Coach Brian Kelly said:
"Every position, all 22 of them, will be evaluated," Kelly said at his postgame news conference. "Each and every position. There is no position that is untouchable on this football team.
Kelly described quarterback DeShone Kizer's play as "below standard" and "not acceptable" after the redshirt sophomore threw for 381 yards and rushed for 60 but turned over the ball twice.
Asked later about who has to be on the field for the Fighting Irish, Kelly said, "Guys that have fire and grit and -- we had one guy in the entire football team that had emotion and fire. That is (running back) Dexter Williams. He's the only one. He's the only one that I saw. One guy.
"So, if you want to play for me moving forward, you better -- I don't care what your résumé says, I don't care if you were a five-star [recruit], if you had 100 tackles or 80 receptions or 30 touchdown passes -- you better have some damn fire and energy in you. We lack it. We lack it. Severely."
Apparently, Notre Dame DWFs were chanting to fire the Defensive Coordinator, but Kelly defended him:
Those personnel changes, however, will leave the coaching staff unaffected. Third-year coordinator Brian VanGorder has faced plenty of heat from the fan base, with the segments of Saturday's Notre Dame Stadium crowd chanting to fire him after the Irish gave up 35-plus points for the fifth time in their past six games dating to last season.
"Actually, that's probably the one area that I feel better about today," Kelly said. "We did what I wanted today in terms of coaching. And coaching had nothing to do with the outcome today. I was pleased from that perspective."
So, it looks like Kelly is actually putting his affletes on notice and is going to hold them accountable. What a novel concept.
Part of me wonders if Kelly felt pressured down this route because of ex-players with a lot of clout like Paul Hornung, who, several years ago, was saying that Notre Dame needed to lax their admissions standards so that more blacks could play for them and that this would lead them to National Championships. Well, that hasn't worked out, and what Kelly probably saw in the team that beat him today, Duke, was a team that reminded him of how Notre Dame used to play...with passion and great execution.