From his unofficial staging area at the north terminus of the Notre Dame sideline, Jimmy Clausen trotted onto the field and toward a huddle he would man for the first time as an Irish quarterback.
Early in Notre Dame’s season opener Saturday, the prized freshman milled about, helmet off and towel slung over his shoulder. And then roughly 50 minutes into 2007, Clausen’s time had come.
The only problem with the future being now, of course, is if the past scorched all the earth behind it. Clausen’s debut was accompanied by cheers, which might have been heartening if they weren’t so excruciatingly ironic. That’s because merely playing the freshman was symptomatic of everything that went haywire in a 33-3 drubbing the Irish suffered at the hands of Georgia Tech.
“Openers can turn out like this,” Irish safety Tom Zbikowski said. “You heard the score of Michigan losing to Appalachian State. You don’t know what’s going to happen in an opener.”
The macro view is this: The sellout crowd at Notre Dame Stadium witnessed the worst opening loss in Irish football history.
And at the risk of being glib, it was indeed a team effort. A game plan to start athletic quarterback Demetrius Jones and run the ball to neutralize Georgia Tech’s defensive aggression fell apart, with Jones gaining just 28 yards on 12 carries and fumbling twice.
Shelving months of work on Plan A, Weis turned to junior Evan Sharpley and a pass-dominated philosophy. Sharpley completed 10 of 13 passes but was the victim of seven of the Yellow Jackets’ nine sacks. As for the Irish’s new 3-4 defense, it didn’t benefit from any sustained offensive drives, but that probably won’t explain all of Tashard Choice’s 196 yards rushing for Georgia Tech.
The Irish wanted to take care of the ball … and lost three fumbles. They wanted to avoid silly penalties … and defensive end Justin Brown was ejected for a personal foul that kept a Georgia Tech drive alive.
Ad nauseam, add nausea.
“About every goal that I identified with the team, it happened just the opposite of what I said,” Irish coach Charlie Weis said, dipping into the gallows humor. “You name it, I was prophetic.”
In headier times Friday, before a pep rally crowd in the Joyce Center understandably lathered up with hope and expectation, Weis sounded all the appropriately feisty, optimistic notes. He tweaked the perception that no one expected anything of the Irish, saying everyone would find out what they had on Saturday.
Here’s what they had: As many questions as they started with, if not more.
“I don’t think anyone on the team anticipated how the game was going to go today,” Sharpley said. “We obviously didn’t think it was going to get quite out of hand like it did.”
After all the preseason rancor and ado, it seemed suddenly like just another issue, but Weis said he would settle the quarterback question within the next two days — announcing a course of action by Tuesday for next week’s trip to Penn State.
Jones and Sharpley were more or less exclusively deployed for the run or pass, respectively, leaving open the question of whether either can manage a thorough game plan. Then, theoretically, add Clausen to the mix.
In any case, the quarterback’s identity needn’t be a top-secret matter any longer. All the Irish’s problems were laid in plain sight Saturday.
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“The whole team knew what we were doing for weeks,” Weis said. “For those [quarterbacks, the secrecy] was just to make sure that those guys weren’t under the scrutiny of all the Notre Dame fans across the country.
“Well, now, you know, it’s open season. From the head coach right on down. You name it, you’ve got it.”
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