Irish offensive coordinator Charley Molnar certainly hopes his unit will put on a good show in Saturday's Blue-Gold Game, but in terms of a game plan — well, there is none, he said.
"It's a practice session with a crowd, which brings the pressure up another level, and both sides of the ball are anxious to perform and make a move," Molnar said. "I think those are the benefits of having a spring game in front of a big crowd in the Stadium. As far as the actual play selection, to me that's really secondary when the spring game comes."
The annual game in Notre Dame Stadium represents the end of spring practice, and Irish fans are anxious to get their first look at coach Brian Kelly's squad — and especially at new starting quarterback Dayne Crist, a sophomore who will take the reigns from NFL-bound Jimmy Clausen.
While Kelly has repeatedly said the defense is ahead of the offense at this point, Molnar said Crist and the rest of the unit have continued to make strides toward where they want to be by Saturday afternoon.
"We have some things yet that Coach Kelly and the staff feels like we must cover by the completion of spring practice," Molnar said. "We touched on some of those [Monday] and we'll touch on some of those Wednesday and Friday.
"For the most part, we really want to see our offense just master the base concepts that we have in the run and the pass game. If we can do that, we'll come out spring ball feeling a lot better than we do right now."
Notes:
u Molnar on what the quarterbacks need:"Repetition, repetition, repetition. The footwork we use enables the quarterback to get the ball out quickly, and a lot of these guys are a little bit elongated in their footwork. It's just taking too long for them to get the ball out for us."
uOn senior wide receiver Duval Kamara: "Duval, the last week, is really starting to look like a BCS football player. He's starting to block, come off the ball with some speed, learning our pass offense and starting to play harder."
uOn fellow senior wide receiver John Goodman, who was "very limited" Monday: "Goody was making some progress, but then he got tweaked in the scrimmage [Saturday]. We'd like to see him out on the field as soon as possible so we can continue to evaluate him and give him a chance to learn our offense."
