SEATTLE — Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis said he wasn’t rubbing it in when he called a fake punt midway through the third quarter Saturday night.
Putting a final touch on a dominant victory over the Washington Huskies? Maybe.
Despite a 24-0 Irish lead and a defensive effort that made it seem seven points might have been plenty to beat the Huskies, Weis saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.
He ran the fake punt right into the face of the Huskies’ frustration.
Harrison Smith took the short snap and bolted through a wide-open hole for 35 yards with 7:35 left in the third quarter, extending a Notre Dame drive that left the Huskies with little chance to come back.
“It’s the third quarter. It’s not 50-0,” Weis said. “I’m not that type of guy.”
On a night when everything seemed to go right for Notre Dame and wrong for Washington, the fake punt became one aspect of a get-well victory for the Irish, along with a strong pass rush and an efficient offense.
Notre Dame scored on its first two possessions, led 17-0 at the half and scored again on its first series of the second half.
Just when it appeared the Huskies had pinned the Irish enough to force Notre Dame’s first punt of the game on fourth-and-13 from 37, Weis saw a chance to put the game into no-doubt mode.
He noticed that the Huskies had lined up in a return formation and, just as Notre Dame had practiced it last week, he called for the fake.
“They were in exactly the look that we practiced,” Weis said. “We got it and it’s supposed to work like that.”
After Harrison took the snap, it wasn’t a matter of whether he’d get the 13 yards needed for a first down. It looked for a while like he’d never stop running.
UW’s Cort Dennison tackled him at the Washington 28, and Notre Dame finished the drive five plays later with a field goal to make the score 27-0.
Harrison said he sensed the Huskies’ frustration after the play, but mostly took good-natured heat from his teammates.
“My, my guys were telling me I should have scored,” he said.
Most of the game went that smoothly for Harrison and the Irish.
Harrison sacked UW quarterback Ronnie Fouch twice, which was a Notre Dame rarity. The Irish entered the game with just seven sacks all season, ranking 100th in the NCAA.
Quarterback Jimmy Clausen finished with 201 yards passing and the Irish running game, which entered with a 101-yard average, gained 285 on the ground.
Notre Dame came out throwing and running, dialing up a 14-0 lead that was exactly what Weis wanted. He worried that the Irish would be flat after having last weekend off.
“I put it on the coaches to be aggressive in play calls so we could get on top of them early,” he said. “When you have a team that’s wounded, if you let them hang around, you can put yourself in a very vulnerable position.”
Despite the early lead and the dominance of his defense against a struggling Husky offense, Weis was uneasy through the second quarter.
He nearly called for the fake punt in the final seconds before halftime, then decided to run out the clock.
In the third quarter, he spread the Notre Dame offense and gave Clausen five receivers to target, hoping that would help his quarterback regain his rhythm.
“Our passing game got a little inconsistent,” Weis said. “That’s why we came out in the third quarter and made a bunch of quick throws to get our timing back. We got back into sync.”
Clausen was a little nervous at halftime as well.
“We talked in the lockerroom about the need to push the pedal down,” he said. “I got out of rhythm in the second quarter but I felt like I got back into it in the third quarter.”
He completed four straight passes to start the third quarter, when Notre Dame scored on James Aldridge’s 4-yard touchdown run.
The Irish sputtered the next time they got the ball — UW sacked Clausen, and Notre Dame was flagged for holding — and it appeared they might actually punt for once.
Then Weis saw the Huskies in the formation he was looking for, and he called the fake punt. He got just what he wanted — a play to give the Irish momentum, not to rub it in the Huskies’ noses.
“That’s not our deal,” he said.
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