So this is what all the excitement was about.
Junior quarterback Jimmy Clausen, who drove with his family to the College Football Hall of Fame here in a white Hummer limo the day of the spring game four years ago to announce he would be attending Notre Dame, is finally starting to live up to the hype that surrounded him ever since he was the nation's No. 1 high school prospect.
Clausen played a second consecutive near perfect game Saturday, completing 15 of 18 passes for 315 yards and four touchdowns - including a pair of spectacular 70- and 88-yard hookups with sophomore wideout Michael Floyd - as the Fighting Irish thundered past Nevada, 35-0, in the season opener at Notre Dame Stadium.
"I only remember two mistakes all game,"
Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis said.
When Clausen completed 22 of 26 passes for 401 yards and five touchdowns in a 49-21 victory over an overrated Hawaii team last year in the Hawaii Bowl, it was hard to tell whether his performance was a mirage. This was no fluke, but rather a continuation of momentum that started last December. The Irish scored on five of their first six possessions and piled up 508 yards of offense, including 178 rushing.
"We think we set a standard,"
Clausen said. "After we lost to USC (38-3, in a game during which the Irish didn't cross midfield until the end of the third quarter in their final regular-season game), Coach Weis talked to the team about stepping forward and never looking back. For us, the Hawaii game was like the first game of this season. This was our second."
Clausen took apart the Broncos, the second-best team in the WAC behind Boise State, slicing and dicing their secondary in less than three quarters. He was never sacked, a testament to the work new offensive line coach Frank Verducci has done with that experienced unit.
That should do wonders for Clausen's confidence, and ease the pressure on Weis heading into Saturday's game at Michigan. Weis was greeted during the week with a billboard near campus that said, "Best wishes to Charlie Weis in the 5th year of his college coaching internship."
The sign was paid for by Tom Reynolds, a retired college marketing professor who lettered here in 1967 and told the South Bend Tribune he represented some 50 former players from his era who are unhappy that the Irish had won only 10 games in the previous two years.
The billboard disappeared before the game, replaced by a Marines recruiting ad, but there is a definite feeling here that this is a critical season for this once-storied program that has already been picked by no less than former Irish coach and current ESPN analyst Lou Holtz to play in the BCS national championship game.
"Just playing at the University of Notre Dame, you're going to have pressure,"
Clausen said. "We always talk about the head coach and quarterback at Notre Dame get too much praise when things go right and get too much blame when things go wrong. To be honest, it's not Coach Weis that's playing on Saturdays. It's us."
On offense, where the Irish have brought in three consecutive Top 10 recruiting classes, they have an embarrassment of riches, including the best group of receivers to play here since 1989, when Rocket Ismail was in school. Floyd, who caught four passes for 189 yards and three TDs, is a playmaker in the Tim Brown mold. Junior wideout Golden Tate and sophomore tight end Kyle Rudolph both look like they'll be high NFL draft picks someday.
Clausen invited all three to his Southern California home this summer for some beach-time bonding and training sessions. But they made their biggest strides when Weis decided to take over the offensive coordinator duties after Mike Haywood left last winter to become head coach at Miami of Ohio.
Frankly, we wonder why it took Weis - who had a reputation as an offensive genius with the New England Patriots - so long to make that decision. Weis had resisted the idea because he feared that he would be perceived as a position coach and was upset by the criticism of his leadership when a young Notre Dame team wallowed in the mire of a 3-9 season in 2007. But Weis has a creative mind that kicks into gear on the sidelines, and his offense was as fun to watch yesterday for the first time since Weis' first year in 2005, when Brady Quinn was emerging as an All-American for a BCS team.
If Weis keeps dialing up home-run plays, Clausen could wind up traveling the same road.
