Blue & Gold Illustrated: 2012 Notre Dame Football Preview
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BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED 2016 FOOTBALL PREVIEW ✦ 31 Kelly is pushing a more proactive approach to information gathering and injury prevention. "[These conversations] don't just involve the strength and conditioning staff," he said. "They involve our training staff. They involve our nutritionists. They involve all aspects of our support staff to make our players more aware of what their potential limitations are, where we have to strengthen potential injury situations across the board. Some are certainly unavoidable when you jump up in the air and you land on your ACL and tear it ... unless you just ban celebrations across the board. "We have a number of areas that we have been very in tune to looking at injury preven- tion, durability, and all those touch the three areas that I mentioned, and we're doing it with science involved, as well. "Science will play a part in making sure that we're staying ahead of injuries and not coming back and saying, 'Gee whiz, we're just unlucky.' That's not acceptable. It's been a priority for me to exhaustively look at all areas on how we can be on top of injury prevention for this football team." The coaches and employees around the program aren't the only ones learning from this new technology. Even the Irish players are able to evaluate their performance based on what the data provides. "It felt like two years in a row there [that Notre Dame was hit by significant injuries," Tranquill said. "We're excited with the new technology we have. We have some acceler- ometer GPS devices that are going to track our load on the day to day, so especially be- ing the player I am, I like to go 110 percent all the time and I can't necessarily feel my body during practice. "But afterwards I feel it, so to have that physical number we can track during practice will be good just as a benchmark, so I can prevent soreness and things moving forward. We're excited about the new technology." *** On media day last August, Kelly declared that his team was the deepest he had devel- oped during his six seasons in South Bend. With all the injuries incurred, that statement was greatly tested. Few teams could absorb season-ending injuries to its starting quarterback, running back, tight end, nose guard and nickel back before the final whistle of the second game of the year and go on to have success. The Irish achieved a 10-win season and went toe-to-toe with eventual national runner-up Clemson (14-1 record) and No. 3 Stanford (12-2) in a pair of two-point defeats. "I couldn't be more proud of the way our kids competed, overcame some catastrophic injuries to key players," Kelly said. "… We're talking about across the board here, we're not just talking about one position, we're talking about impacting all positions, playing on the road against very good competition, getting home at 5:00 in the morning, bouncing back, playing two option teams, I could go on and on. "Proud of my football team. We didn't get it done, we didn't win enough games; we get that. But this is a really good football team." While the Irish are working toward limit- ing the number of injuries suffered in future seasons, Kelly knows that to some extent it's a reality of the sport and one that cannot be completely eliminated. What Notre Dame can control is its ability to develop across- the-board depth each year. "Everybody clearly understands the game of college football, that maybe there's a team or two that is immune from that, we're all dealing with it," he said. "And so, from our perspective, each and every year you go in and you know that your roster is not going to stay the same in November. That's why you have to prepare yourself and build your football team with depth. "We know what that looks like now, and we'll continue to build our football team to have the kind of depth to sustain injuries that occur naturally in college football." ✦ All-American linebacker Jaylon Smith started 39 straight games for the Irish from 2013-15 before a severe knee injury in the Fiesta Bowl affected his NFL stock. Smith is projected to sit out the 2016 season for the Dallas Cowboys. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA Starting left guard Quenton Nelson injured his ankle at Clemson Oct. 3 and was sidelined for a pair of contests. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA