Brian Kelly

SOUTH BEND -- Notre Dame nose guard Ian Williams will miss 4-6 weeks with a knee injury , Irish coach Brian Kelly announced Tuesday at his weekly press conference. Word of Williams missing time first surfaced late Monday.   "It seems to be the worst kept secret in America," Kelly said.   Williams injured his knee in last Saturday's 35-17 loss to Navy. Kelly said the injury is an MCL strain and it will not require surgery.   Kelly said that he is hopeful that wide receiver Michael Floyd (hamstring)

The newest crop of Notre Dame football players signed their national letters of intent Wednesday. "We have a class that represents the needs that we had in our football program," Irish coach Brian Kelly said. Kelly introduced his third recruiting class at Notre Dame on Wednesday, 16 young men from 13 different states. The headline grabber: five-star quarterback Gunner Kiel, a high school All-American and the top-ranked quarterback in the country, who left LSU at the altar and enrolled early at Notre Dame.

SOUTH BEND -- Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly is no doubt well aware that his team played its best game of the season last Saturday in a 28-3 trouncing of 15th-ranked Utah. Now it's time to see it again. "I think for us, more than anything else, it's about consistency and performance," Kelly said Tuesday at his weekly press conference. "Not once in a while. Not just playing well one game. " The 5-5 Irish get their chance Saturday night against Army at Yankee Stadium in New York, a game that is considered a home game for Notre Dame.

SOUTH BEND - There were no quiet moments between whirs of the fax machine, delivering yet another national letter-of-intent on Wednesday. Brian Kelly already had his feet in 2011. The first-year Notre Dame head football coach used his down time to work rather than celebrate Wednesday, calling top junior prospects around the nation and offering them scholarships. “Really getting them to think, ‘Hey, the culmination of this in the next 365 days is going to be you signing your national letter-of-intent to come to the University of Notre Dame,’ ” Kelly explained of the timing and the strategy.

SOUTH BEND — It rolled off Brian Kelly's tongue like a punch line. It was anything but. "Our players are committed, they're excited, and they want to win," Kelly related Friday at a meet-and-greet press conference with the first-year Notre Dame head football coach and his staff. "Having said that, I think we had seven guys who threw up before we got through stretching. " Thursday was the first day of Kelly's offseason conditioning program. It was the first touchstone of the coach to find out just what he had inherited from deposed chief Charlie Weis.

According to Brian Kelly , “We're not good enough.” That's right. Good teams don't beat themselves. Notre Dame has done it twice in two weeks. I'm still having a hard time grasping how things fell apart so quickly for Notre Dame down the stretch in Ann Arbor. For three quarters, Notre Dame made Michigan look more like a MAC team, than the winningest program in college football. So how did it all go wrong? The better question, may be why? For all of Notre Dame's positives two games into the season (and they are plentiful)

Former Notre Dame offensive coordinator Charley Molnar will not coach the Irish in the Champs Sports Bowl, choosing to focus instead on his new role as head coach at UMass. “After evaluating the situation, I felt it was in the best interest of the UMass football program for me to focus primarily on the work at hand,” Molnar said in a statement released by the school. “It was a strong first week in reaching out to recruits and speaking with prospective members of the next coaching staff.” Molnar is still putting his coaching staff together and is busy recruting, with national signing day less than two months away.

NEW YORK - The Minnesota Vikings didn't take a chance on Harrison Smith hanging around for six more picks.  Instead, they traded up into the 1st round with the Baltimore Ravens, and drafted the former University of Notre Dame safety with the 29th overall pick.   Smith joins teammate Michael Floyd(Arizona-13th) as the second Fighting Irish player taken in the first round. It's the first Notre Dame has had two players drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft since 1994.

SOUTH BEND — Notre Dame starting quarterback Dayne Crist underwent season-ending surgery on his left knee Sunday to repair a torn patellar tendon, Irish head football coach Brian Kelly said. Crist’s recovery time is expected to be six months, which could curtail his activity or even completely wipe out spring practice in 2011. Crist suffered the injury during a 29-yard run, the longest of his career, in the first quarter of Saturday’s 28-27 loss to Tulsa at ND Stadium.

Life is a blur, as a kick returner in major college football.  Just ask Notre Dame freshman George Atkinson III. "When I've got the ball in my hands I'm not really thinking.  You don't have time to think.  I just hit it as fast as I can. " Click here for the Notre Dame football schedule Atkinson ran right into the record books on Saturday and earned himself a spot in Irish lore. His 96 yard kick-off return, makes him only the 2nd freshman in school history, to run back two kick-offs for touchdowns in the same season!