What Notre Dame OC Gerad Parker said before USC game

Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker said Tuesday night that despite coming off a tough loss to Louisville, the Fighting Irish had one of their best practices of the season that day.

“Which just completely speaks to who we are and who those kids are,” Parker said. “And I mean that. Phenomenal energy. Resilient. Ready to fight back and earn the right to be a winner. That’s who these guys are. You would have no doubt, right? They were eager. They’re all pissed off in a very positive way. We all are, right? We’re all here together. The staff and players are aligned. We’re all in this fight to get it fixed and be better and do our part.” 

Here are some other things Parker said about the Notre Dame offense a few days before it tries to hang with No. 10 USC in South Bend on Saturday night.

On simplifying the Notre Dame offense

“You have to analyze, look at all of it, drown it all out and figure out why we didn’t execute our best. You all know these narratives can go a lot of different ways. At the end of the day, starting with me, we didn’t execute some of our base plays that we feel strongly about. And when you don’t do that on critical downs or downs that led up to critical downs you get results you all don’t want to see and we don’t want to see. That, really at its core before anything else, is it. That’s the whole premise of who we are.

“And the number one goal is the ball, right? If you don’t take care of the ball it’s hard to win — against good opponents, especially. That, at its core, was the start of it. So, to answer your question, you got to have enough to make sure you can attack people which we did a really good job, especially early, of having multiple schemes. But then you got to be able to execute them, no question. That’s measured week in, week out.”

On the Irish offensive line rotation vs. Louisville

“You make those decisions, of course, every week, talking about personnel. We make them together. I was told to stand behind what we believe we needed to do based off of, hey, where we were with health, where we are with playing as many as we have straight, where we also got to make sure we plan for the long term to see some of those guys play and that they earned the right through practice to play. It’s both.

“How did they do? They did solid. It’s something that, did they play at a level that’s going to be winning all the time? Maybe not. But at the same time, I think all of our coaches would sit right here in front of you and say no position group did. That’s fair to those guys that got their chances. It was good to get to see them do those things. But we got to play better at every position.”

On blocking for short yardage runs

“There is always an extra hat. But where you decide or hopefully decide where the extra hat is getting, that’s the key piece. If you look at the second one from the left hash that we gave up the run through on, we just didn’t execute the play. That’s not an extra hat. We just didn’t execute our play.

“Again, it starts with me. Sometimes when you call it on third down that I was hoping to get four downs on you’re making a run call to make a call on fourth down, they attacked our edges and again we didn’t execute properly.

“There is always one play you’re going to stay up at night and say, ‘Man, maybe I can have that one back and go ahead and throw it there.’ That’s the stuff that I got to balance to make sure we attack them on. There is always an extra hat. It’s where you want it to be, and hopefully you execute better to do it. And then we got to put our guys in position to help them too.”

On Notre Dame’s execution errors

“It’s different people or different things, to be honest. There is not just one thing. If it was, you’d have already had some things solved when they pop up. It’s not just one thing. The overall theme is, especially on critical downs, if you look back even, and not to bring up old sores, but Ohio State, there are also big moments prior to that could have led to it not being a third and short. Does that make sense? Sometimes the best answer on not being good on third down is not being in third down. Or certainly not being in third down and eight plus. That’s a real answer. There is a lot into it. There always is. Especially when you’re facing good people, and we are facing good people. And you know what? My job and our job is to make sure we’re good against good people. And we’ll be better.”

On a lack of play action in the Notre Dame passing game

“Oh yes, we want to use it more. When you get into a throw mode when you’re 2 to 1 throw and you’re behind, you lose your play action. It becomes a drop back pass game. We believe in our offensive line and everybody, but when you get in a drop back pass game against good opponents, that’s hard. It makes it hard on everybody. You’re trying to move the pocket enough, but when you’re in a throw mode to get back in a game, it takes away a little bit of who we are and your play action game. So we got to get it back and keep it. And the best way to do that is to run the football and play with leads. So, yes.”