Strange Ramp-Up Leaves Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly Feeling Like A Rookie Coach

Brian Kelly couldn’t help but laugh. 

What, Notre Dame’s 11th-year football coach was asked during a virtual news conference this week, has been the most surprising aspect of these past five months amid the pandemic? 

“Is that a trick question?” Kelly said. “Surprising? Everything is surprising. Each day is a surprise.”

He would later add: “Look, I’ve been doing it for 30 years. I feel like a first-year head coach.”

Four weeks away from facing Duke in the season opener of a vastly recast schedule, one that no longer includes a trio of planned Pac-12 (USC, Stanford) and Big Ten (Wisconsin) opponents as those conferences have canceled football this fall, Kelly is trying to get his team ready to play as a full-fledged ACC participant.  

Spring practice, you’ll recall, was canceled after one session, so no one in a gold helmet has done any tackling — or been tackled — since blasting Iowa State in the Camping World Bowl back in late December. 

Masked and socially distanced on the practice field, Kelly finds himself analyzing data about lost water weight as much as the usual GPS movement metrics following these tentative early sessions. 

Because student trainers no longer roam among the players squirting water bottles during breaks, the Fighting Irish must retrieve their own individual water bottles from kiosks spread throughout the practice facility.  

After one early practice, 15 to 17 Notre Dame players had lost about 3 percent of their body weight. Typically that group is only 6-8 players. 

“Exponentially different,” Kelly said. “That’s a small thing but it’s important to keep an eye on. It’s going to start affecting you.” 

Players have been strongly advised to wear their face coverings as much as possible during practice, but Kelly and his fellow masked assistants know that’s not always practical. 

What is non-negotiable is a continued commitment to the sort of overall hygiene and distancing choices that have enabled Kelly’s program to rank among the least infected by COVID-19 in college football. Monday’s latest round of testing yielded just two positive results out of 117 football players tested.

Seven more players joined those two in quarantine after contact tracing was conducted, but overall Notre Dame’s testing numbers have been pristine. According to the school, Notre Dame had administered 619 tests to members of the football program and athletic department staff. 

Of those just four came back positive (.006) for COVID-19 and two of those players had since recovered.

“Managing all these other things — that can be taxing and consuming and require such a great attention to detail from our players,” Kelly said. “They have been unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. (But) how taxing does this become over the long haul?”

More surprises, no doubt, lie ahead.