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With roster still in flux, Kelly plans on being at 85 by Texas

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For the first time in over a decade, Notre Dame has a roster crunch.

As Notre Dame’s fifth-year candidates submit their applications to the university, Brian Kelly plans on moving forward and using every minute he has to figure out his roster.

“You have to be at 85 when you kick off,” Kelly said of his maximum-capacity roster. “We’ll be at 85 when we kick off.”

That’s a far cry from the team’s of recent memory, when coaching transitions, recruiting washouts and roster holes left many Notre Dame football teams involuntarily working with far less than a full allotment of 85 scholarship players.