Notre Dame Coach Kelly slated his players at practice on Wednesday as they broke up for Easter break with some stinging words from their new leader.

“We stink right now,” said Kelly bluntly.

“We are just so far from where we need to be in terms of attention to detail.”

Quarterback Dayne Crist came in some pointed criticism from Kelly:

“He’s about as sloppy with the fundamentals as they are,” he said. “Maybe, we are putting a little too much out there in terms of our offense right now. I got to look at scaling this back a little bit.”

Kelly was hired to turn the fortunes of the team around, and he is demanding that that sea change starts now.

“We don’t have time. We got to do it now,” he continued. “It’s got to get done the right way. You get 15 practices, and that’s all you got.

“I can’t wait until August to put this team in position to win in 2010. It’s got to happen today.”

However, it was not all doom and gloom as Coach Kelly was given a glimmer of hope by the work from his defense.

“I liked what I saw defensively, but we’ve got to do this thing together. We are not on the same page yet.”

Not the best progress report to come out of South Bend, but better right the ship now before another season of football comes and goes for the Irish.

Wide receiver Michael Floyd admitted that payers were not in the zone for their coach.

“He (Kelly) pointed out that we are not focused,” he said.

“A lot of us, we came out sluggish and not in tune. We just got to pick it up and be more focused with the playbook and concentrate more.”

Better dust off the cobwebs before Coach Kelly does a bit of spring-cleaning of his own.