SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Brian Kelly and Mack Brown first met at the Hula Bowl, back when Notre Dame’s all-time winningest head coach was still at Division II Grand Valley State, working off the radar of major college football at a time when Brown was near the peak of his powers at Texas. Two political creatures who coach college football as CEOs, Kelly and Brown made a connection that has endured. When Kelly wanted to trek from Allendale, Mich., to Austin, Texas, to learn, Brown opened his doors.
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Their careers intersected in a different way 12 years ago when Brown’s last great team at Texas nearly lost in the Big 12 Championship Game to Nebraska, only to get one second put back on the clock to kick a game-winning field goal. If Texas had gone down, Cincinnati would have likely slid into the BCS National Championship Game against Alabama. And it’s hard to imagine Kelly taking the Notre Dame job that winter if he was playing for a title.
“North Carolina, where would I start there, certainly with my friend, Mack Brown,” Kelly said. “Just a ton of respect for him and what he’s done in building this program back up.”
Kelly is the winningest head coach in the FBS (279 wins), when his Grand Valley work is included. Brown is second (263 wins), tied with Nick Saban. Brown is the longest serving head coach in the sport at 32 seasons. Kelly is one year behind him.
On Saturday night (7:30 p.m., NBC), No. 11 Notre Dame (6-1) hosts North Carolina (4-3) as the Irish look to make the most of a transition year while the Tar Heels attempt to figure out what’s gone wrong in a season advertised with so much promise. Quarterback Sam Howell is a now a former Heisman Trophy contender. Defensive coordinator Jay Bateman is now a former up-and-coming assistant. As much as Kelly tried to praise North Carolina’s talent level, he knows those compliments come with a barbed wire edge.
Because if North Carolina really is the recruiting machine it appears to be under Brown, why are the Tar Heels such a mess away from Chapel Hill, winless in two games while scoring four total touchdowns? How can a defense with a five-star cornerback be so average?
“I know there’s a lot of people talking about the expectations and they haven’t lived up to those expectations. I’m sure they have higher expectations. But as you watch them on film and evaluate them, this is a talented football team,” Kelly said. “Individually, we were matching them up against the teams that we played, they have Cincinnati talent, they have Florida State talent, they have a little bit of everything, and why it hasn’t gone their way, that’s not my job to figure out.
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“But I know we have to go into this game expecting them to put it all together, and if they do, they’re a very good football team.”
North Carolina was supposed to flirt with greatness this season, which is why a game that looked like a potential top-10 matchup in August was scheduled for prime time. Regardless, Notre Dame has its own issues to figure out, with an evolving offensive approach, a secondary missing a top-10 pick at safety and a defensive line that will be challenged by Howell beyond his passing ability.
Here’s what to watch on Saturday night, plus a prediction.
Can the secondary hold without Hamilton?
Notre Dame got a preview of this last November at North Carolina when Kyle Hamilton was ejected for targeting in the first half, forcing Houston Griffith and D.J. Brown into the rotation next to starter Shaun Crawford. And in Notre Dame’s most complete performance of the year, the Irish secondary … held up just fine. The Tar Heels were shut out in the second half and finished with under 300 yards total offense.
How that applies this weekend is less clear, but it can’t hurt Notre Dame as it stares down the possibility of Hamilton’s career in South Bend being over. Kelly said Hamilton received PRP (platelet-rich plasma) treatment on his injured right knee but did not practice. And while Kelly didn’t put a timeline on Hamilton’s potential return, the safety is out this weekend and likely next at a minimum.
“He’s been actively involved with coaching this week. He’s done a really good job,” Kelly said. “He’s working with the safeties. Totally engaged, being a captain, obviously doing a great job. For him, leave some knowledge. I think he’s done a really good job of understanding that.”
That means Griffith and Brown are back up, this time starting next to one another while the defensive staff transitions Isaiah Pryor back to safety as the third option. Sophom*ore Ramon Henderson remains in the dime package, which was surprisingly effective last weekend against USC. Kedon Slovis finished 1-of-7 for 11 yards and an interception against that dime set.
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Brown and Henderson logged career highs for snaps played versus USC. They figure to get similar time this weekend and most weekends the rest of this season until Hamilton returns. For what it’s worth, Brown’s defensive grade from PFF last weekend was the highest on the team.
“I think (Brown) has worked on his weaknesses,” Kelly said. “I think part of this is understanding what are the areas that you have to work on, and his first area was he needed to be a great tackler, and he’s really now a solid tackler, whether it’s on kickoff team, or getting the ball down on the ground.
“He’s not gifted like Kyle Hamilton, where he can patrol the back end and just go take the ball away. He’s got to get the ball down on the ground, and I think he’s really done a great job of firming up that part of his game.”
The Irish don’t need another smothering of the Tar Heels this weekend to win. North Carolina’s 17 points scored against Notre Dame last year marked a season low by 10 points. But if Brown and Griffith can back stop the defense without turning star slot receiver Josh Downs loose, Kelly would considered that a win.
Does Notre Dame’s offensive identity need adaptation?
The scent of how Notre Dame wanted to play offense was in the air before Tommy Rees made the change to unlock the best of Jack Coan against USC. Coming off an idle week, the Irish still sprung their tempo with a variety of personnel groupings that caught the Trojans off guard. So what happens when the surprise is no longer a surprise? That’s a question Rees and his call sheet will have to answer on Saturday night.
For what it’s worth, Kelly believes pace of play was little advantage last weekend, at least in terms of catching USC by surprise. If that’s true, the utility of going quickly against North Carolina will be much the same, with or without the extra week to prepare.
“All we really did was try to pick up our pace a little bit, but it certainly wasn’t a pace that even USC plays at and so, all defenses are now accustomed to playing teams that play at a quick pace, especially in the Pac-12,” Kelly said. “I think that pace of play didn’t really allow us to do much more other than the execution. I think our execution was much better, and we’ll continue obviously to fall on execution over just playing fast.
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“You can play fast and sloppy and it’s three-and-out.”
Notre Dame had just one of those against USC, comfortably winning the time of possession battle while also controlling the pace of the game. For however quickly the Irish played, the game plan never felt out of control with Coan or Tyler Buchner at the controls. Notre Dame finished 8 of 12 on third down, a departure from its conversion rates earlier this season.
“We got our quarterback to operate a little bit quicker,” Kelly said, “which allowed him to play a little bit freer, and I think that’s not necessarily a surprise element as much as it was we were executing better because our quarterback was feeling much more comfortable and being allowed to move the offense a little bit faster.”
Translation: Notre Dame will keep Coan on a stopwatch in terms of getting the ball out. And if that plan doesn’t work for a second week, it will be down to a lack of execution on Notre Dame’s part more than anything North Carolina does defensively.
What if the problem with Howell isn’t his arm?
Kyren Williams averages two more rushing yards per game than Sam Howell.
This is not a reality Notre Dame would have expected before the season, not with Williams’ breakout sophom*ore season and Howell’s pro prospect status. Yet Howell’s rushing skills may put Notre Dame’s defense on notice in a different way, as the North Carolina quarterback is more than a capable runner.
Howell has rushed for more than 100 yards three times this season and averages 13.7 carries per game. To put that in more familiar terms, Ian Book averaged 9.7 carries per game last season, which includes sacks. And Howell has been ragdolled plenty, with North Carolina’s pass protection a tick worse than Notre Dame’s, with the Irish offensive line appearing to have improved the past two weeks.
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The Tar Heels have allowed 27 sacks in seven games, a worse pace than last year’s awful protection numbers. North Carolina allowed 34 sacks last season, a 2.83 sacks-allowed-per-game rate that ranked 100th nationally. This year’s 3.86 sacks allowed per game ranks 126th, worst among Power 5 programs.
The numbers say Notre Dame should harass Howell most of Saturday night. They also say defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman may need to rethink his coverages. He might prefer man-to-man, but that invites Howell to run against defensive backs not looking back at the quarterback. Zone schemes would allow for a more immediate chasedown of Howell.
“I think in a number of situations where it concerns us the most is third down,” Kelly said. “Our third down defense has been quite a bit of man coverage, and third down becomes problematic now because of the quarterback draw. Last year we got after him and we sacked the quarterback quite a bit. We were able to get after him.
“Now obviously, the neutralizing of that pass rush is the ability to run quarterback draw. So we’ve got to be cognizant of it. We’ve got to run more line games, we’ve got to be able to take away some of those lanes in particular, that could be there. So, it does slow down your pass rush a little bit and force you to play a little bit more zone.”
Prediction
In beating USC last weekend with a more up-tempo offense, Notre Dame took a repeatable step forward, probably for the first time all season. The quarterback rotation felt more organized than grab bag. The fifth different starting offensive line felt like the right one. A half-dozen different freshmen showed something that can impact the season’s second half. Notre Dame is far from a complete team, but that misses the point that they’re moving toward becoming one. The Irish should be able to build on last weekend’s offensive performance and get after Sam Howell enough to avoid massive fourth-quarter drama.
Notre Dame 38, North Carolina 28
(Photo: Robin Alam / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Pete Sampson is a staff writer for The Athletic on the Notre Dame football beat, a program he’s covered for the past 21 seasons. The former editor and co-founder of Irish Illustrated, Pete has covered six different regimes in South Bend, reporting on the Fighting Irish from the end of the Bob Davie years through the start of the Marcus Freeman era.
