Brian Kelly puts entire Notre Dame team on blast

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly says he will evaluate every player on the team.

Notre Dame lost a a thrilling game to Duke, in what was a back-and-forth affair. Unfortunately for the Fighting Irish, the loss dropped Notre Dame to 1-3 on the season.

For a team with lofty aspirations, 1-3 is simply unacceptable. The fans won’t stand for it, and well neither will head coach Brian Kelly, who put the entire team on notice.

“Every position, all 22 of them, will be evaluated,” Kelly said at his postgame news conference, via ESPN. “Each and every position. There is no position that is untouchable on this football team. And that’s the quarterback, all the way down to — maybe the long snapper’s OK. We’re not going to touch him. But everybody else is vulnerable.”

You might think that quarterback DeShone Kizer would be untouchable. He came into the year considered one of the best players and the country.

Against Duke, Kizer passed for 381 yards and two touchdowns, adding another score on the ground and rushing for 60 yards. But Kizer committed two turnovers, and has also landed on Kelly’s list.

“So, if you want to play for me moving forward, you better — I don’t care what your résumé says, I don’t care if you were a five-star [recruit], if you had 100 tackles or 80 receptions or 30 touchdown passes — you better have some damn fire and energy in you. We lack it. We lack it. Severely.”

Notre Dame isn’t the only top-tier team to struggle early in this season. Oklahoma and USC have also struggled and seen their College Football Playoff hopes dwindle away in the first month of the season.