Coaches Denbrock and Ash dissect the Blue-Gold Game's takeaways, highlighting offensive progress and defensive challenges posed by emerging talent.
The 95th annual Blue Gold game came to a conclusion this afternoon after the blue team, the offense, won 41-38 in a back and forth match inside of Notre Dame Stadium. This also signifies the end of spring training, meaning the longest stretch of the Fighting Irish offseason is ahead of us. There was a lot to take away from this afternoon's spring break. We got to see a lot of good on both sides of the ball. All three quarterbacks made some impressive plays today and there were a couple of individuals on the defensive side of the ball making plays as well. After the scrimmage, we got to hear from offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock and defensive coordinator Chris Ash.
You can watch the entire press conference here:
Here are some of the main quotes from today's press conference:
Mike Denbrock On His Overall Thoughts From The Offense
"I'm really proud of the players," Denbrock explained. "I thought throughout the entire spring we've had really good attention to detail. We've come eager to get better every day. I think it shows in where we're at compared to the first couple years around the sun here, coming back and where we are now offensively. I wish we had started a little faster. I thought we were pretty sloppy in the beginning and missed some things that we need to make sure we shore up whether that's decision making or protection checks.
"We just have to be sharper out of the gate than we were today," Denbrock continued. "But I thought we picked it up as time went along. We were able to hit some big chunk plays, which is kind of the foundation of what this offense is built on, and we've got to continue to get better at our consistency. So that we stay on the field and every time we touch the football, we score points."
Mike Denbrock On The Young Wide Receivers
"I like that group overall," Denbrock shared. "I think there's a lot of diverse talent in that group. Most of them have come in with a level of maturity and their work ethic is at a level where they've picked things up pretty fast and they continue to get better. Now, they're in charge to dig in over the summer now that they've had one install. Now they're going to get another one over the summer that looks very similar to the one we just did. So their details and their focus should bump up a little bit. But I like the versatility of that group, and I think there's some really talented players there."
Chris Ash On How CJ Carr Tested The Defense
"He does such a great job of getting the offense into the right plays," Ash stated. "He's looking for indications. Whether a guy's aligned outside, inside, a slight tilt with the inside foot, outside foot back and where are his eyes. He's done a great job of studying what we do on defense to get an idea of what plays work best. That's really when you talk about command of the offense and the challenge that we have is to try to eliminate those things and try to take those out of what he can do so well. So it's a competition every single day. He's done a great job. He did a little bit of that last year, but a lot more of it this spring."
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