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Freshmen big contributors as Notre Dame rolls on
Notre Dame not only romped Massachusetts on Saturday, the Fighting Irish also got to see what they have in several freshmen coach Brian Kelly and his staff hope develop into productive players sooner or later.
First-year players had a hand in seven of the Fighting Irish's nine touchdowns against the Minutemen,
Of course three of those were by redshirt freshman and starting quarterback DeShone Kizer, who threw two touchdown passes and ran for another, but four came from true freshmen Josh Adams, C.J. Sanders, Brandon Wimbush and Dexter Williams.
Sanders, a receiver by trade, returned a punt 50 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter while first-year running backs Adams and Williams scored on runs of 70 and 14 yards, respectively.
Wimbush, who has been elevated to No. 2 quarterback following the offseason transfer of Everett Golson and season-ending injury to Malik Zaire, saw his first action and ripped off a 58-yard touchdown run.
"The young backs stand out to me," Kelly said in his postgame press conference. "Adams and Williams getting in was very, very important to us. Josh got 13 carries, Dexter got seven. So taking some of those carries away from CJ (Prosise) was important to us.
"Getting Brandon Wimbush in there I thought was also very important, and we've wanted him to run the offense. That was very important to us.
"We really felt like trying to make sure that when he went in there, regardless of what the score was, we had to give him real game experiences and do the things that may happen in a game situation. He is our backup, and he has not played any football, and he's a true freshman. That was very important to us."
