Quick hitters: What Notre Dame OC Gerad Parker said prior to Central Michigan game
Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker spoke to reporters Tuesday evening about the strong start to the season, the game plan for NC State and junior tight end Mitchell Evans‘ usage.
Here’s what Parker had to say ahead of Notre Dame’s Week 3 matchup with Central Michigan.
On bouncing back from six three-and-outs against NC State:
“Do we want those? You all know, no. But I’ll say this, I think I told you guys and we all knew it, that’s a good operation. Tony Gibson is as good as it gets. And I mean that: He is as good as it gets. We knew there were gonna be some punches thrown that we were gonna have to manage and deal with, and I thought for the most part, our staff and players dealt with them, and then we were able to strike. We struck, and we were able to put points on the board.”
On Notre Dame coming out of the gate strong on offense:
“Yeah, I feel like, just going through — I say, ‘I,’ ‘We,’ too — we feel like the preparation made [in the] spring, late spring, summer and all those things is put yourself in a momentum piece to where you are prepared to attack this thing instead of learning how to play good football on offense as it went. We have to do that too, but I think Game 1 we were prepared to play efficient and good on offense early, which has bred some success. And hopefully we’ll handle some three-and-outs and some things that happened in that game where you don’t panic, you just handle it.”
On going into the game thinking Notre Dame would need to do different things in their run scheme (i.e. unbalanced line) due to NC State’s strengths:
“Oh, absolutely. We knew we were gonna have to get different pictures, and it is a testament to Joe Rudolph and things in his past and all those things to find a way to make them have some difficulty defending them. Because we knew that lining up in conventional formations, and how they looked on film against the things they’d done, that’s tough sledding.”
On if he knew what play he wanted to run on Audric Estimé’s touchdown throughout the weather delay:
“Absolutely, and it’s one we had repped, but we certainly — you put your finger on a couple of them and [we said], ‘Hey, we need to get these up.’ … We repped it all week to have it ready.”
On Mitchell Evans leading the skill position players in snaps by a significant margin:
“One, knowledge base, certainly that. But then you would say, let’s be fair, his body type and who he is as a player and his skill set allows him to play on the line of scrimmage and in space, that’s a unique quality. I think that’s allowed him to do both, because if you watch him fit the run and what he has done in three games, just going back and what he has done in the run fit, it’s pretty remarkable.”
