Brian Kelly Awkwardly References John McKay's 'Execution' Remark After Notre Dame Win

Kelly attempted to quote legendary coach John McKay following his team's overtime win over Florida State, but the joke didn't really land with most of his audience.

Moments after his team capped off a wild 41-38 overtime win on the road over Florida State, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly made a awkward attempt at humor during a post-game interview with ESPN's Katie George in which he joked his team deserved to be executed for playing so poorly.

"I'm in favor of execution—maybe our entire team needs to be executed after tonight," Kelly quipped. "We just didn't execute very well."

When speaking to reporters later, Kelly explained he was referring to an old quote by former USC and Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach John McKay, who was once asked what he thought about his team's execution and responded, "I'm in favor of it."

"It's an old John McKay quote. I was kidding," Kelly said, per ESPN's Adam Rittenberg. "I was being tongue-in-cheek. ... It wasn't funny? I was making a joke about it. It was taken serious. Are you people crazy?"

Kelly's joke didn't seem to land to a lot of viewers who might not have been aware of the line's origins. Below are some standout social media reactions to Kelly's eyebrow-raising one-liner:

uh.. what do we think of Brian Kelly's humor attempt? it's a twist on an old one liner, saying his whole team "should be executed." but this is '21.. yeah I don't think it works. It was a resilient W in very tough environment.

— Chris Fowler (@cbfowler) September 6, 2021

Brian Kelly did not execute that joke very well.

— Annie Agar (@AnnieAgar) September 6, 2021

Brian Kelly really went there.

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) September 6, 2021

Did BRIAN* Kelly actually say, during a live interview, that his entire team should potentially be executed tonight?

This dude’s wild pic.twitter.com/7OTl7ZzKYk

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) September 6, 2021

In his postgame interview, Notre Dame's Brian Kelly tried paraphrasing a great old John McKay line about an all-time bad Tampa Bay team concerning "execution." Kelly's attempt fell flat, did not work. Hey, coach, your team JUST WON AT FLORIDA STATE. And that deserves "execution"?

— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) September 6, 2021