Brian Kelly spoke to the media after Notre Dame’s first fall camp practice for 2016 on Saturday. Kelly only spoke for about 10 minutes, but thanks to the fine team at Fighting Irish Media, we have the video below along with some notes
- Kelly had high praise for freshman running back Tony Jones. Josh Adams had some cramping problems and Dexter Williams was held out due to sickness which opened the door for some reps for Jones and Kelly gave the frosh some props for how well he performed.
- Kelly didn’t exactly sing the praises of his wide receiver group though. He spoke with a lot of generalities when discussing the wide receivers. For Equanimeous St. Brown specifically, Kelly alluded to some inconsistencies with his route running that the staff worked on today.
- Even without pads the staff is able to use a day like today’s practice to evaluate the offensive linemen – specifically the right guard position that is still up for grabs at this point.
- Kelly again reiterated that his two quarterbacks are “a little bit different”. He also hinted that a decision on who will be starting won’t be coming any time soon and might not come until they have to make a decision (ie before Texas).
- The staff is looking for consistency out of Max Redfield. Kelly referenced seeing flashes from him in the past and then not seeing that for a few weeks. He said right now he couldn’t say if he was better because he would need to see him be good in practice consistency for days in a row before he could say if he was a different player than he was in the spring.
- Tarean Folston added a little weight from where he was at last year because he felt he needed to be a little bit bigger this year. Kelly said he is an “elusive, smooth inside-outside runner.”
- Part of the rationale behind going to Culver for the first few days of camp is to get the players away from campus and give them a bit of a mental break where they can just focus on football.
- On Friday Kelly was asked about the work volume for Jarron Jones and stated he was looking for 25-35 plays out of him. Pressed on the issue today he reiterated that was the base they were looking for out of Jones this fall.
- Kelly said that the staff would check the GPS numbers to see where they were at but felt they might need to tweak the schedule tomorrow because the numbers might be a little bit high and they don’t want to start out too fast.
