SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Notre Dame had not beaten a No. 1 team at home in 27 years, but Brian Kelly picked Saturday to turn into a fortune-teller.
“Man, Coach Kelly, you might as well call him a prophet,” said Irish star linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah. “Prophet Kelly.”
On Thursday, Kelly had forecast what Notre Dame would do to prevent top-ranked Clemson from stealing its offensive signals – and he said the Irish “have prepared for it” and would use wrist-bands extensively in their play-calling.
In the aftermath of Notre Dame's dazzling, 47-40 double-overtime win against the Tigers Kelly said the Irish had filled quarterback Ian Book's wristband with darn-near a playbook's worth of plays.
"We wanted to make sure that we had about 150 to 175 plays that we wanted to make sure that we didn't signal in,” Kelly said. “Then we played fast, so there was no signaling. Again, I think from our perspective, it'll be the way that we continue to play against Clemson."
Notre Dame scored an overtime-forcing touchdown in the game's closing seconds and then won the contest in the second overtime when the Irish defense pounded Tigers freshman D.J. Uiagalelei into an impossible situation.
It was a brilliant stretch of foreshadowing for Kelly, who got his first-ever win against a No. 1 team. The Irish's 11th-year coach shared that he told his team it would defeat Clemson – hours before kickoff in the team's stadium walk-through.
“I had told our team, and again, I'm doing a lot of things I probably shouldn't be doing, but I told our team at our walk-through today, I said, 'Listen, I just want you to know when we win this thing, the fans are going to storm the field,'” Kelly shared, “and with COVID being as it is, we got to get off the field and get to the tunnel.'
“Now I beat them all to the tunnel, so that didn't go over so good. But they reminded me that I did tell them that. My skill of prognostications was pretty good today."