By Ben Ford
Truth Staff
NOTRE DAME -- Charlie Weis started Saturday's post-game press conference with the two words he uses to begin all his interviews: "Fire away."
Only this time he couldn't be blamed for wondering if real bullets, not just questions, were going to be flying toward him.
Weis was ready to take a hit for the team, though, placing the blame on himself for Notre Dame's 33-3 loss to Georgia Tech.
"With that performance right there, you obviously have to take the blame and responsibility starting with me," Weis said, "because I would have thought that we would have performed better than we did."
Most of Weis' key points of emphasis for the week ended up being negatives for the Irish on Saturday. He stressed taking care of the ball to his team and Notre Dame fumbled three times. He told his players not to commit any "stupid penalties" and the Irish took a few costly ones. He warned his players to be ready for the speed of the game and they looked a step slow.
"You name it, I was prophetic," Weis said.
His biggest miscalculations, though, might've been in his two most important decisions: selecting a starting quarterback and formulating a game plan.
Weis chose Demetrius Jones to start the game because he thought Jones could run the ball against the Yellow Jackets. Jones ran 12 times for 28 yards, fumbled twice and couldn't make plays throwing when Tech dared him to.
"We only worry about winning that one game and obviously that didn't play out too well," Weis said, adding, "It's open season, OK, from the head coach right on down."
It was also his call to structure the game plan around the running game, which turned out to be disastrous for the Irish, who finished with minus-8 yards on 41 carries.
"We were going in there determined to try to run the ball, make sure we didn't have negative plays, make sure we played close to the vest early and got used to the speed of the game with the number of people that were relatively inexperienced," Weis said.
One positive the Irish could take from the game, Weis said, was the players realizing that he would take the blame when things go wrong, as they did on Saturday.
"Today I will be more than happy to sit there and say I did a crummy job," Weis said.
Brown out: Irish senior defensive end Justin Brown was ejected from the game in the second quarter when he hit a Georgia Tech offensive lineman in the face. The penalty came after Notre Dame had held the Yellow Jackets on third down and 9 from the Irish 39.
Tech scored its first touchdown of the day two plays later to build a 16-0 lead.
"Obviously, it's a dumb thing to do, but I think that was a critical turning point in the game as far as whatever gas you had left in your tank seemed to start to run out at that time," Weis said.
Starting fresh: Nine Notre Dame freshmen played in the game, led by running back Armando Allen, who rushed for 25 yards on three carries and returned five kicks for an average of 16.8 yards.
All of Allen's carries came in the first 18 minutes of the game because, Weis said, after that Notre Dame needed better blockers to help protect the quarterback and Allen isn't as adept at picking up the blitz as the other running backs.
"When the game started to get a little out of hand, it wasn't the time for him to be getting in there," Weis said.
The other freshmen to play were quarterback Jimmy Clausen, kicker Brandon Walker (whose 24-yard field goal accounted for the only Irish points), receiver Duval Kamara, receiver Golden Tate, running back Robert Hughes, linebacker Aaron Nagel, linebacker Kerry Neal and nose tackle Ian Williams.
Contact Ben Ford at bford@etruth.com.