Brian Kelly believes Notre Dame offense clicks with higher tempo

Speaking in a press conference on Monday ahead of their matchup with UNC, No. 11 Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly had praise for his offense’s new tempo. Kelly outlined that their greatest successes on offense this year have come when their offense doesn’t slow down and keeps their pace on the attack.

Brian Kelly on his offense’s tempo

After Notre Dame’s 31-16 win over USC last week, Kelly was optimistic that his offense had finally begun to click and discover its strengths. On Monday, Kelly was asked if he had seen anything from his offense that his team could build upon.

“Tempo seems to be an ally for us within this offensive structure,” Kelly answered. “Look, it’s never really been about the plays as much as how the play is going to be executed at its most consistent level. This has been about consistent execution. Sometimes you have to huddle and it takes time for you to see it and scan it. And this offense and this group and the quarterback in particular seems to work better if there’s a pace to it.”

The quarterback Kelly referred to is Jack Coan, who threw 20 completions on 28 attempts for 189 yards and a touchdown along with an interception. Despite the somewhat low passing production, Notre Dame and Coan found great success in the running game with three touchdowns.

“He’s a guy who makes quick decisions and seems to operate based upon what we had seen leading into the USC game, that the snapshots of his effective and efficient play was tempo driven,” Kelly said of Coan. “So we said ‘all right,’ let’s run this one up the flag pole and see if it works. We’re trying to do the same things, we’re trying to find out how to best utilize and get the best version of our players.

“And so that was what we went to work at on the off week to kind of take those best moments. And it really centered around quick drops, getting the ball out, quicker reads — you saw we were reading the box for the first time this year. Our run game now was predicated on what the box looked like. We hadn’t done that up to this point and it was really effective, so I would tell you that there will be more of that to come.”

No. 11 Notre Dame will host UNC on Saturday, as the Fighting Irish look to improve upon their 6-1 season. No. 6 Michigan and No. 9 Iowa both fell on Saturday, opening the door for Notre Dame to improve their ranking again.