Notre Dame Football: Irish's Bowl Game a Preview of 2015 QB Battle

After taking a look at Notre Dame's quarterback position heading into the Music City Bowl, it took Brian Kelly three practices to make a decision on whom to play. Both of them.

Monday evening, Kelly disclosed his plan to play both Everett Golson and Malik Zaire against LSU. With two weeks to go before the Irish offense gets set to take on the SEC's best statistical defense, Kelly explained the logic behind the decision to use both signal-callers against the Tigers.

"I think both of them can help us win,” Kelly said. "I want to play them both because I think both of them have different traits and we need to find a way to win the game. I think both of them can help us win."

Winning will be a steep task.

According to Odds Shark, the Irish are already seven-point underdogs heading to Nashville, Tennessee on December 30. They'll also need to find a way to slow down LSU's power-running attack, stopping freshman Leonard Fournette with a MASH unit in the front seven.

Offensively, the task for the Irish isn't much easier. The Tigers' young defense is third nationally in scoring, giving up just 16.4 points a game. It has more interceptions (10) than touchdown passes allowed (nine), while surrendering just 162 yards a game through the air.

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So if Kelly is looking for ways to generate points, it only makes sense to try and get the best of both worlds at the quarterback position.

"I think as we get into the game there are skill sets that each one of them has that are a little bit different that we’ll utilize in the game," Kelly said. "They both have strengths and we will call upon those strengths during the game. I’m confident that I can manage both of them during the game."

For Zaire, that means trying to open up the ground game with the zone read. While it was against a USC team that had a five-touchdown head start, the Irish moved the ball with the run, as Zaire and Greg Bryant broke off some big plays.

That seems like the best place to begin attacking LSU, with the Tigers' rush defense pedestrian compared to other statistical measurements. At 4.2 yards per carry allowed, LSU ranks 60th in the country.

But in many ways, the bowl game is almost secondary to what's shaking out on the practice fields on campus.

In stepping away from Golson for the bowl game after living through an astounding 22 turnovers in nine games before finally giving him the hook against USC, Kelly is setting the tone for an interesting offseason.

The move isn't unprecedented. You only have to look back to the end of the 2011 season to see Kelly doing something similar. After watching turnovers plague Tommy Rees and an otherwise explosive offense, Kelly finally gave Andrew Hendrix an opportunity to play in the season finale as well as the bowl game.

Kelly kept that competition open after the season ended, turning spring into a four-man race between Rees, Hendrix, Golson and early enrollee freshman Gunner Kiel.

That battle ended up with Golson on top, usurping Rees even after he had been the starter in 16 of the last 17 games Notre Dame had played.

Kelly looks to be making a similar move. So while the bowl game is important, the microscope on the quarterback position is simply part of what's expected when a position underperforms.

"[That] would have been the case at any position," Kelly said. "Anybody that’s not interested in getting better in the areas a coach feels he needs to get better at, he generally usually transfers."

That's a bold statement from Notre Dame's head coach. It also feels like a significant attitude change from earlier in the season.

While Kelly shuffled other positions—safety in particular—when he felt like he wasn't getting optimal performances from his players, the Irish head coach took the long view at quarterback, living through the mistakes Golson made after a year away from football.

But that rope is gone. Kelly revealed that it was Golson's job these past few weeks to earn back any playing time, crediting his senior quarterback for putting in the effort necessary to have a chance to even platoon.

"We had a conversation about what I wanted from him and he’s handled it great. He’s doing exactly what I’m asking him to do on a day-to-day basis," Kelly said. "I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I wasn’t even interested in really going down this road unless he was fully committed and engaged in working on the things that I thought he needed to work on and he’s been all of that."

So the Irish will head to Nashville with two quarterbacks incorporated into the game plan. It's 60 minutes of football that'll serve as the official opening of a quarterback battle that could last into 2015.

"I’m open really to anything at this point," Kelly said. "We want to put the best football team, the best offense that we can put on the field. Ideally, you’d like to have one, but if we’ve got two, then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll see how this plays out and then evaluate it as we move forward."

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained firsthand.