Fresh off a dominant rivalry win, Joe Rudolph and his squad break down the "next man up" mentality driving their undefeated streak ahead of a physical road clash.
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are 4-0 and coming off a 39-point victory over their in-state rival, the Purdue Boilermakers. The Irish have won every game so far this season by double-digits, something they've been doing since September of last season. This week, they face the North Carolina Tar Heels on the road in Chapel Hill. Today, we got to hear from Notre Dame offensive line coach Joe Rudolph, linebackers Jaylen Sneed and Drayk Bowen, running back Aneyas Williams and offensive lineman Sullivan Absher today after practice.
You can watch the entire press conference here:
Here are some of the main quotes from today's post-practice press conference:
RUDOLPH ON SULLIVAN ABSHER'S PROGRESSION
"He's doing good," Rudolph said. " I think one of the biggest things he's done is he's really put an emphasis on trying to take care of his body. Early in the year, we try to be conservative with the total number of reps that were on him. But I do like his maturity, how he's really embraced the idea of, man, I can take care of myself and I can dive into these resources. And he's done a great job with it, but he's in a good place."
ABSHER ON THE MOVING PIECES IN THE O-LINE ROOM
"I think from the beginning, just any person that's in the offensive line room, I'm going to have great trust in," Absher explained. "And that goes for, I hope I speak for everybody when I say that. We've always believed in the 'next guy up' mentality and that there should be no drop off between our ones, twos, third group, fourth group. And that's just kind of the culture that [Marcus] Freeman and Rudolph have done a great job of creating and kind of just raising our floor week by week, year by year."
BOWEN ON THE DEFENSIVE TACKLE ROTATION
"Yeah, I mean, to have all those guys and then have as many as we do that can rotate and stay fresh, it just makes this place so much cleaner," Bowen shared. "They take on double teams and then as soon as a guy comes off, they're making a play. So the O-line really has to honor them, which just makes our job so much easier. Having those guys has been phenomenal this year. I say the world of them because they make my job a ton easier."
WILLIAMS ON HIS FILM PROCESS DURING THE WEEK
"Obviously it starts with the front and then the stunts that they like to do and what they're good at," Williams stated. "UNC likes to two gap, which clogs up the hole. So [we] got to be quicker on our reads, got to press them and got to make them play their gaps. Then you obviously go down the line and then move up to the backers see how they play downhill and how they like to blitz. Are they blitzing team? Then how they cover and where we can attack them at."
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