Brian Kelly Reiterates That A QB Decision Won’t Come After Spring Practice
It didn’t come as a shock when head coach Brian Kelly said Wednesday that he expects the quarterback competition to be unresolved once Notre Dame concludes spring practice a week from Saturday with the Blue-Gold Game.
With senior Malik Zaire and junior DeShone Kizer receiving equal reps in practice, Kelly said a decision will likely wait until the fall.
“The two quarterbacks are really good players,” Kelly said. “Each one of them has different things they need to work on. I think one thing we’re realizing is we’ve done a lot of things offensively that we did not do with Malik in camp that we did as we evolved offensively during the year. There’s a lot of things he’s doing for the first time. Knowledge base for Malik has been important in terms of the spring. He’s needed the spring to kind of pick up some of the things we put in offensively during the year. It’s been very good for him. It’s hard to evaluate strictly who’s ahead of who because we’re installing for him. But communication, footwork, all those things, balance, those are the things that Malik needs to continue to work on.
“[With] DeShone, it’s what I’ve talked about before. It’s across the board reads, it’s red zone efficiency. It’s consistency.”
Kelly admitted that the reality of the situation is there can’t be a happy resolution for both of those players and sophomore Brandon Wimbush.
“They have different things they’re working on and they’re both progressing at it,” Kelly said. “They’re both No. 1s. They both probably can’t play at the same time. One’s going to have to be the starter and somebody’s going to be unhappy, but I can’t keep them all happy.
“We’re not going to go into the season with a team that does not have an identity. We’re going to have an identity as to who we are and that doesn’t mean we can’t play more than one quarterback. But we’ll have a quarterback and we’ll get that established.”
Ohio State drew a significant amount of criticism last fall for the way it handled the quarterback derby between Cardale Jones and J.T. Barrett. Not until the Buckeyes’ final game of the regular season did the offense seem to fully click, with Notre Dame also falling victim to a Buckeyes offense at full capacity in the 44-28 loss in the Fiesta Bowl.
“It seemed to me that Ohio State really found their identity after the Michigan State game where Ezekiel Elliott can be credited with waking up their entire coaching staff and saying, ‘Who are we?’ I think the lessons learned there are what is our identity going to be and they clearly decided who they were going to be after that game,” Kelly said. “They went with J.T. and said this is what we’re going to be and that’s who they were against us. So I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen to us. We’ll have an identity. We’ll know who we are.
“It doesn’t mean you can’t play two quarterbacks, but we’ll clearly need to know that and you just can’t keep three quarterbacks happy. Somebody’s going to be disappointed, but they’re going to have to know their roles and accept their roles moving forward.”
Quick Hits
• Junior quarterback Montgomery VanGorder practiced as the first-team holder Wednesday, with Kizer relegated to second-team holding duties on field goals. Kizer remained the holder throughout the 2015 season after becoming the starter once Zaire suffered the season-ending injury.
“With DeShone and everything we’re asking him to do, we felt like let’s take a look at Montgomery,” Kelly said. “I’ll be honest with you. We had a conversation with our kickers and [kicker Justin Yoon] had been lobbying a little bit for VanGorder. So we decided to give it a shot, and there’s a pretty good connection there with that group.
“We’ll continue working. He obviously has a little more free time in terms of being able to get over there and spend some time with him and we’re going to move in that direction right now and Montgomery will be with that battery right now.”
Kelly added that Yoon’s range has extended this spring, with Kelly now feeling comfortable with the sophomore on kicks of 47 to 50 yards compared to 43 in the fall.
• Senior wide receiver Corey Robinson remains unable to practice and will see a specialist regarding his concussion this week.
• With sophomore CJ Sanders out until the summer with a hip flexor injury, Kelly said senior wide receiver Torii Hunter Jr., freshman wide receiver Kevin Stepherson and walk-on Chris Finke have all fielded punts in practice.