Brian Kelly: U-M Was Better Team 'In All Phases'

"Clearly, a disappointing night for Notre Dame," he said. "Congratulations to Michigan. They were the better team tonight. In all phases, they were better.

"We certainly didn't coach well enough tonight and didn't play well enough. Consequently, that was the message to our team and I don't have great in-depth for you to give you reasons why.

"That's not our identity, but that's what we showed tonight and we own what we showed."

Kelly made an interesting decision before the game even started. His team won the coin toss, elected to receive and took the ball going into the wind.

"The plan was, obviously, to kick and take the wind in the third quarter," Kelly explained. "I told our guys we have to cut [the lead] in half in the third quarter and we just weren't able to do it."

Once the game did begin, Kelly recognized that his team was outmatched by a hungry and confident U-M team playing at home.

"We're a team that makes plays," Kelly said. "We weren't making any plays.

"It felt like it was going to be a struggle right from the get go."

The Wolverines stopped ND on the first drive of the game. The Fighting Irish stopped U-M on its first offensive possession and forced a punt. Will Hart's punt was blocked and subsequently muffed by ND. Daxton Hill recovered it and gave U-M new life on offense. It then scored the game's first points, on a 19-yard field goal by Jake Moody. That kind of momentum swing was key early on and didn't allow ND to get off to a fast start.

"We had talked about getting off to a fast start for about two weeks," Kelly said. "We didn’t get off to a fast start. That was concerning.

"Obviously, a big momentum piece was the fumble off of the blocked punt. You’re trying to gain momentum when you’re on the road. But, I think it felt like we weren’t who we [have been] offensively, defensively."

With the heavy rain and high wind speeds being a factor, running the football was important. U-M ran the ball for 303 yards to ND's 47 yards.

When asked if it was surprising how well U-M was able to run the ball on the Fighting Irish defense, Kelly said "absolutely."

"That hasn't been who we are," Kelly said. "We've been really stingy. Our identity was not on display tonight. We're a physical team. We weren't physical."

Kelly admitted that the weather played a factor in the lack of offensive production on a night that the ND offense only put up 180 total yards.

"It was going to be difficult," he said. "But, that defense is set up with a very aggressive tilt toward making it difficult to run the football.

"But, you still have to find ways to run the football. We just weren't effective in doing so. When we had chances, we weren't able to execute."

U-M took a 17-0 lead into the locker room at halftime. Kelly said the third quarter was going to have to be theirs if they wanted a chance to come back. The Fighting Irish did score a TD with 5:37 remaining in the third quarter to cut the lead to 10 points, but they wouldn't be able to sustain any sort of momentum that the TD gave them, as U-M answered right back on the next drive to make it 24-7.

"At that point, 17-7, it just felt like we weren't up to the task tonight and they broke it open with the late score."

U-M never looked back after the game was broken open and ran ND right out of town in a dominating 45-14 victory.

Notes

· Kelly said that U-M made it tough for ND’s top receiver, Chase Claypool, to get open tonight.

“They doubled, they bracketed him,” he said. “He wasn’t going to get the football.”

Claypool finished the game with two receptions for 42 yards.

---

• Talk about this article inside The Fort

• Watch our videos and subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Listen and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes

• Learn more about our print and digital publication, The Wolverine

• Sign up for our newsletter, The Wolverine Now

• Follow us on Twitter: @TheWolverineMag, @Balas_Wolverine, @EJHolland_TW, @AustinFox42, @JB_ Wolverine, Clayton Sayfie and @DrewCHallett

• Like us on Facebook