SOUTH BEND - Brian Kelly kept his opening remarks about Saturday's University of Tulsa football matchup short and shocking.
It took the first-year Notre Dame head football coach all of eight seconds Tuesday to launch into a favorable comparison between Golden Hurricane junior quarterback G.J. Kinne and NFL icon Brett Favre.
And that was well down the list of the scariest things the Notre Dame defense is having to deal with this week, just days removed from giving up the most rushing yardage to Navy (367) in the 84-year history of that series.
At the top of the ledger of bad news is that Notre Dame (4-4) will be picking up the pieces without senior nose guard Ian Williams, quite possibly ND's most consistent player on a defense that has been largely inconsistent this season.
Kelly confirmed Tuesday that Williams is expected to miss the next four to six weeks with a knee injury, a sprained medial collateral ligament that will not require surgery.
“It's an injury that some come back quicker than others,” Kelly said. “We'll be able to get a better feel for it, probably next week after we get it to calm down, and go from there.”
Where ND will go for reinforcements against an offense that has piled up 500 yards or better in each of its past four games is junior Sean Cwynar.
Junior Hafis Williams, a backup defensive end this season - out of necessity, will slide back over to his natural position to become Cwynar's tag-teammate at the nose. Freshman Kona Schwenke, the reigning Hawaii high school Player of the Year, will move into the two-deeps at defensive end.
Schwenke had been in line for a redshirt year but will instead start his eligibility clock on Saturday, in week nine of the season.
“This is still about winning, and we are in that mode where we have got to win some more games, obviously,” Kelly said of his decision to elevate Schwenke.
“Getting to a bowl game is very important, so this isn't one of those, ‘Let's ride out the streak here.' We need help.”
The Irish may need help at inside linebacker as well, though Kelly is hopeful sophomore starter Carlo Calabrese (hamstring pull) will be ready to play. If not, sophomore Dan Fox fills in.
Elsewhere on the injury front:
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Notre Dame football: Bracing for a Hurricane
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- Kelly said starting wide receiver Theo Riddick (ankle sprain) will be out at least three more weeks. His replacement, freshman TJ Jones, tweaked a hamstring in Saturday's 35-17 loss to Navy, but Kelly said the MRI came back clear and Jones should be ready to play against Tulsa.
“We upped his reps so much, he still is a freshman and he got a lot more playing time, especially in that slot position,” Kelly said of Jones. “So I think more of it was fatigue than anything else. We checked him out carefully. ... We should have no ill effects with TJ.” - ND's leading receiver, Michael Floyd, who missed the Navy game with a hamstring injury, and safety Jamoris Slaughter, in and out of the lineup since Sept. 4 with an ankle injury, will have their playing status for Saturday defined later in the week. Kelly was hopeful to have them both.
“He's feeling better,” Kelly said of Floyd. “And we want to make sure that he's able to play at full speed when we get him back. So, again, I think we'll manage that during the week and see how he feels.”
‘I'll be back'
Ian Williams ambled off the practice field Tuesday on crutches, and sporting a brace on his left knee seemingly the size of a small Third World country.
He quickly vowed to beat the time frame his doctors have laid out for a full recovery, a prognosis that could mean Williams has played his last game in an Irish uniform if the doctors are right and if ND misses the minimum of six wins to get into the fringe of the bowl picture.
“It's tough,” he said. “I've never had any injuries like this, but you just got to get past it and worry about making your teammates better.”
Williams called the injury a freak accident, but a clean play.
“I think somebody just got rolled up into me,” he said. “Just the way the person fell into me and (that) I heard a few things, I knew (the injury was serious).”
