Notre Dame Closing Strong Is About Notre Dame

Transcript

00:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]

00:04 It's not so much about the bowl, Ryan, it's about winning and

00:08 about winning in a way that you say, hey, we are better now, right now,

00:13 than we were when we went through those struggles against Ohio State, Duke and

00:18 Louisville, we're better now than we were when we played Clemson.

00:23 And that's why I say these next two games, the Stanford game and

00:26 whoever they get in the bowl game, are not really about their opponent.

00:29 They're about Notre Dame.

00:31 They're about finding out what kind of character Notre Dame has because

00:34 the Wake Forest game, Ryan, Notre Dame had every reason in the world,

00:38 especially some of the veterans to say, you know what, our season's toast.

00:42 We're not gonna get a New Year's Six Bowl, we're not gonna be in the playoff,

00:46 we don't have a chance to play for a championship.

00:48 We're playing a team that stinks at home.

00:50 What's our motivation for going out there and playing?

00:53 And the motivation was because we're playing for us, we're not playing for

00:57 them, we're not playing because of them, we're not stepping on that field for

01:01 Wake Forest, we're stepping on that field for us.

01:03 And that was great for that one week, but can you continue it, right?

01:08 Can you go on the road and do it?

01:09 Can you continue building on the younger players?

01:11 Can you trust them as much on the road as you do at home?

01:14 Because they haven't, they haven't, Ryan.

01:16 I mean, if you look at the road games, they haven't been that kind of that

01:20 aggressive team when they've gone on the road.

01:22 They're kind of forced into it against NC State.

01:24 I still say that game is the caveat, is an asterisk,

01:28 because what we saw post two hour break was not what we saw pre two hour break.

01:34 Now maybe it would have changed anyway.

01:35 I don't know the answer to that, but

01:36 you can't ignore that that was different than the other things.

01:39 I... I... I...

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