Brian Kelly Makes His Case For Notre Dame As A College Football Playoff Team
Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly wasn’t tiptoeing around the subject.
After the Irish blew out Stanford 45-14 on Saturday, Kelly made a full-throated case for his team belonging in the College Football Playoff.
The Irish were ranked sixth in the poll which came out on Tuesday. Michigan’s 42-27 victory over Ohio State should move the Irish up a spot. Next week, Alabama plays Georgia in the SEC Championship. A loss by the Crimson Tide gives Notre Dame a good shot to move into the playoffs for the third straight year. The Irish have won seven straight games. Its only loss was 24-13 to Cincinnati on Oct. 2.
“Certainly, it’s a game we felt like we controlled from start to finish,” Kelly said. “It was 24-0 at the half. That’s 100 points if you guys weren’t counting over the last two weeks to 14. It’s a really good football team. I think it’s one of the best four football teams in the country.”
Kelly said the team has played championship-level football for the last half of the season.
“We controlled what we needed to control,” he said. “That was to play really good football on offense, defense, and special teams. Over the past six or seven weeks, we’ve done that. So, we’ve made our case. Now, we sit back and see what other people think. We got one of the best four teams in my mind in the country without question and we’re ready to prove it.”
Notre Dame was dominant on both sides of the football
The Irish racked up 510 yards of total offense. Senior quarterback Jack Coan completed 26 of 35 passes for 345 yards with two touchdowns and an interception.
The Irish (11-1) gave up their first TD in November after Coan threw a third-quarter interception that gave Stanford (3-9) the ball at the 13.
The defense, except for allowing a 49-yard TD pass from Tanner McKee to Benjamin Yurosek in the fourth quarter, was sharp.
Stanford finished with 227 yards and Notre Dame held them to 55 yards rushing. The Irish finished with two sacks and two fumble recoveries.
The Irish took Stanford out of the game early. Braden Lenzy started the scoring when he caught a 16-yard pass from Coan with 9:39 left in the first quarter. George Takacs gave the Irish a 14-0 lead with 14:30 left in the first half after catching a 2-yard TD pass from Coan. Jonathan Doerer kicked a 36-yard field goal with 11:27 left in the second quarter to make it 17-0. Kyren Williams finished the scoring with a 1-yard TD run with 4:47 left in the half. That made it 24-0 and the rout was on.
The script for the game went as planned, according to Kelly.
“We knew we had to control the situation because we aren’t controlling anything after this,” Kelly said. “It was control the controllables. Because after today, we don’t control anything. We were going to make sure we controlled the outcome today. Whatever happened out there, we made it happen.”
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