ND wins big after Kelly apologizes

Published Oct. 30, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Notre Dame's players put on a united front to run out easy winners on the football field Saturday in the aftermath of coach Brian Kelly's controversial comments about the team.

The 56-14 rout of Navy came a day after Kelly reportedly apologized to his players for drawing clear lines in public on which members of the Fighting Irish were not performing.

"You can see the players that I have recruited, you know who they are," Kelly said post-practice Thursday. "We've had one class of kids that we've recruited that I've had my hand on. The other guys here are coming along. It's a process. It can't happen overnight. They're getting it. They're making good progress."

The comments left several of the team hurt, disappointed and angry, sources told the Chicago Tribune, while a few of the players made their discontent public on Twitter before apparently deleting the messages.

Kelly, now in his second year in South Bend, admitted Saturday that the comments affected the mood of the camp.

"As a family, we all have good days and bad days," Kelly said, according to the Tribune. "And we had to work through some things this week."

But he said the result against Navy showed the air had been cleared.

"Like all families, if there's a disagreement, if there's any kind of need to communicate, it needs to get done, and we did that," Kelly added. "We communicated with each other as a family, and you saw it today [Saturday]. You saw a team that played together."

Tailback Jonas Gray, who rushed for 69 yards and three scores Saturday, said that Kelly was receptive to the player's response to his comments.

"We just wanted to make sure [Kelly] was aware of how we were feeling, and I think that he was," he said. "We had some things we needed to hash out. We got that across to coach Kelly, and he did a great job of hearing us out. And we just went from there."