Glancing Back, Moving Forward

Following last Saturday’s game with USC, there were about three dozen recruits slated for Sunday meetings with Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis. Naturally, Weis did what any good coach would do – he scrapped his usual Sunday postgame press conference, opting to combine the USC postmortem with his usual Tuesday presser.

Thus, we begin with the aftermath of the 34-27 loss to the Trojans:

USC Recap
• Senior wide receiver Robby Parris, remarkably, came out okay following a vicious fourth-quarter hit, one that apparently looked a lot worse than it was. Parris received X-rays on his hip, knee and ankle, and all came up negative, and an MRI on the knee revealed only a bruise. He’s currently listed as doubtful for this week’s game with Boston College.

“There’s a chance he might be able to be used even as early as the game this week,” Weis said. “He won’t practice today or tomorrow, because he’s very sore...But it came out remarkably well.”

• The injured foot of junior quarterback Jimmy Clausen came up again after it was stepped on by USC lineman Everson Griffen, but Weis said that Clausen’s turf toe isn’t a whole lot worse than it already had been.

“Jimmy’s like a M.A.S.H. unit after every game,” the coach stated. “But he’s grown so much as a person and a player where things like that, that he would be whining about, he just has learned to live with.”

• Weis was asked again about the clock management at the end of the game, particularly the 20 seconds of time that ticked off after Parris’ injury. He replied that he was torn on whether to call a timeout at that point, tying into his statement Saturday that he would have used that timeout after a touchdown to decide whether to go for two points and a win or just kick the PAT for overtime.

“I had a good feeling for the number of plays that we were going to have at our disposal,” Weis said. “We cut it a little close, but I think it worked out. Didn’t work out score-wise, the way we planned, but time wise it worked out fine.”

• Don’t read too much into the insertion of juniors Armando Allen and Golden Tate as the kickoff return men, Weis cautioned. Those jobs still belong to senior Barry Gallup and freshman Theo Riddick, but with the Irish down by 20 points against USC, the coach was just looking for another chance to get a big play from his best playmakers.

• Speaking of big plays...

One of the biggest plays in the game for the Irish was the 25-yard pass from senior holder Eric Maust to Parris on a fake field goal. That set up Notre Dame’s lone first-half touchdown, a 2-yard run by junior Robert Hughes.

Weis pointed to the relative anonymity of Parris as the key to the play’s success.

“The fact that it was Robby, not Golden, was the critical factor,” he said. “You know, when we first went to put it in, I said the last person we want to do it with is Golden, because usually people will track him and see where he goes.

“What we planned on, and you even notice by the play call on third down, by running a run in that situation, we sent in on the third down call that were we doing it on the fourth down. So now you run the ball and they go off the field like they’re just going off the field and Robby never left the field, just stood there a couple yards from the sideline.

And, to be honest with you, it felt like an eternity until the ball was snapped. Because he’s standing there right in front of my face and I’m saying, ‘Snap it, Snap it, Snap it.’ Because you figure sooner or later, somebody’s going to look out there and take a peek and see them there.

“But Golden went off at a different spot, so when he came off the field he didn’t come off where Robby was coming off. He went off in another direction to make sure we didn’t bring any attention to what Robby was doing.”

• Junior walk-on David Ruffer will continue to get the call on kickoffs, as much to give freshman kicker Nick Tausch a break as anything.

“We wanted to take some of the pressure off of Tausch,” Weis said, “let him just have to concentrate on one thing and not have to handle all the kicking in the game.”

• Sophomore wideout John Goodman earned a rare start against USC and had his number called early, picking up 13 yards on a direct snap out of the Wildcat formation. After a few solid weeks of practice, and especially with Parris’ status up in the air, look for Goodman to receive more action in the near future.

“He’s become very dependable,” Weis said. “He’s not the fastest guy in the world, but he’s smooth and he can catch the ball. And he also gives us an opportunity to do a couple of wrinkles, you know, by putting him in quarterback.

“He just gives us another weapon that, utilized properly, besides just as a receiver, we can do a couple things with.”

• The Wildcat formation was also an option at the end of the game, Weis said, but “if I called it at that time you guys would have thought I was just absolutely nuts.”

When asked to elaborate on the play, the coach said no – “because you might see it this week.”

Boston College Preview
(Or At Least That’s What It Was Supposed To Be)

Before the press even really got into specific questions about Boston College, the focus turned to the “big picture” questions, including one about the state of the Notre Dame program.

Weis opted to use one instance – the fourth quarter of last week’s game – to illustrate where he believed the Irish stand at this point in time.

“Just take the last game. 34 14, 13:30 to go in the fourth quarter, what did you think was going to happen?” he asked. “That is where this team has now changed, and that is a significant, significant point that’s now changed. Because there wasn’t anyone on the sideline that didn’t think they were going to win down 20 against SC at all. All of a sudden now we have the ball with 4:19 or whatever it was to go, what did you think now? [You’re] saying, now you’ve got the ball in Clausen’s hand they’re going to go down and score again.

“That alone might sound a bit rhetorical, but that is how the program has now changed, because you haven’t been able to say that for the last four years. You can say it now.”

Later, a question arose about the overall talent level and whether it compares yet with that of USC.

“You can ask all those recruits that were at the game,” Weis replied. “Ask them what they think. I think that you are going to get a resounding yes across the board. I don’t think one of them would say no.”

• Between the other “big picture” questions, Weis was asked about Boston College linebacker Mark Herzlich, who was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and has been forced to sit out the 2009 season. The coach said that when he found out about Herzlich during the offseason, he contacted Barry Gallup Sr., who works within the Eagles’ athletic department.

“[Gallup] gave me his cell phone number,” Weis recalled. “Then I texted [Herzlich], then we traded phone calls, and it has really, really grown from there. Where, you know, we communicate regularly.

“There’s some cool things we do. Like when I was going to surprise the team with going to the lake [during training camp], he knew about it. My team didn’t know about it, but he knew about it...Because I was asking a player’s perspective. I’m thinking about canceling the second practice and taking them up to the lake. He said, ‘Oh, I think that would be awesome.’

It’s a relationship that goes against the concept of a rivalry between two teams, but Weis and Herzlich have both been able to put team colors aside on this.

“I already had respect for him as a player,” said Weis. “I have much more respect for him as a person.”

• Weis noted that because the university is on fall break this week, the NCAA’s usual 20-hour time limits on football don’t apply.

“This is a good time for being a football coach,” he said, “because the players are around a lot more now. We still need our preparation time like a normal week as a coaching staff, you know, but there’s much more of an effort to be around the office more...The other thing that’s happening is the students not being here and the guys being able to get some peace and quiet, and get some extra sleep and get over here and get an early workout in and getting more film study in.”

At the same time, the weekly schedule from a practice standpoint won’t really change, even with school not in session.

“We still have guys that are doing homework,” Weis explained. “They’re actually doing work while school’s closed and going over academic support...Some even come a little late to practice because they’re continuing to work on academic support.”

• The Boston College game last year was probably Clausen’s worst, according to Weis, but the coach seems to expect that to change this time around.

“One of the reasons why I have confidence that we’re ready to go is because he’s been ready to go,” Weis stated. “We were already talking Saturday night. The game was over Saturday night, we were already talking. Sunday we’re trading texts all day.

“He now has grown as a quarterback, where if they’re going to end up making him dump the ball off then he’s going to dump the ball off. If they come up on him, he’ll go by them. So I have confidence now that he won’t try to be Superman and try to make something that’s not there.”