A little jab from Irish does trick against winless UW

Fourth-and-13, midway through the third quarter, Notre Dame with the ball at its 37 and leading 24-0.

The Tyrone Willingham-Charlie Weis melodrama, such a sizzling debate not so long ago, had quieted to a whisper, embers just about burned out.

Then the Huskies' punt-return unit showed a certain look, the same one that turned up on video in the football offices back in South Bend. And Weis couldn't resist.

"I saw it before it was snapped," he said. "You say, 'Oh, it's there.' "

Was it ever. Notre Dame hiked the ball to the upback, sophomore safety Harrison Smith. He got a nice block — but not a thunderous one — to his right, and suddenly he was in the middle lane of I-5 on Christmas morning.

Smith rumbled for 35 yards on a play that was so "there" that when he got up, he heard teammates razzing him that he didn't score.

Mostly, it was like that Saturday night by the lake, the Irish competent and opportunistic, the Huskies flummoxed and somehow failing to execute a single play for double-digit yardage until six minutes remained.

Coaches are practiced at shrugging off the dynamics of their relationships, and Weis played the role perfectly. A 33-7 winner, he could afford to be matter-of-fact about any feeling lingering about Willingham, the Notre Dame coach from 2002-04, among the South Benders and subway alumni.

"We both felt, talking back in 2005 [when they met here in their first years at their new schools], that we were glad to get it out of the way then," Weis said. "It was more the media keeps it going than we keep it going.

"There was no feeling of that on our team. I don't think there was any feeling of that on their team, to be honest with you."

That may all be true. It's probably also true that somewhere deep within Weis' Baby-Huey frame, he had to enjoy sticking it to Willingham and the Huskies, on a fake punt, on fourth-and-13, for crying out loud, a down when every reasonable convention says to kick the ball away and live to play another down.

In fact, the case can be made that even though it was only halfway through the third quarter, there was something overt about Weis' intentions on the play, inasmuch as the UW offense looked like it had gathered for its first 2008 practice on Thursday.

"It was the third quarter, it's 27-0 [actually 24-0]," Weis protested. "It's not 50-0. I'm not that type of guy. You saw us. We yanked everyone early in the fourth quarter, and the one touchdown they got was against a bunch of guys who never play."

Zing.

"That's not our deal here," Weis said.

Funny thing is, the fake punt probably should have happened in the last minute of the second quarter. That's when the Irish had fourth-and-seven at their 49 with a little less than a minute left, and the fans expectantly waited for the Huskies to use timeouts to try to muster something of note before the half.

Except they didn't. Willingham explained to a radio reporter as he left the field that he didn't want to call time because he thought it might encourage Notre Dame to try to keep the ball. As it turned out, the Irish would have — with the fake.

"I had it dialed up to call right before halftime," Weis said. "But when there were only two or three seconds left, I figured, why call it now?"

So the coach who was down 17-0 was OK with pulling in his horns before the half, and the one who was up 17-0 was ready to call a fake punt at midfield.

That posture, and a lot more, seemed to reflect where the teams are headed — Notre Dame at 5-2 and respectable, Washington at 0-7 and owning a nine-game losing streak.

For instance, Weis said he told his coaches he wanted them to be aggressive calling plays, figuring that with his team coming off a bye and a 2,000-mile trip, it might be lethargic. So the Irish blitzed Ronnie Fouch mercilessly, sacking him four times, and threw 21 first-half passes, including several deep balls.

Then came the fake, on which Smith did a pretty good job.

"We had a pretty good idea it was going to open up pretty big," Smith said. "And right when we snapped it, it opened up even more."

Meanwhile, the Irish players brought out for interviews didn't betray any particular emotion over the Willingham-as-ex story line.

"Everybody has respect for him," said Smith. "It was just two teams going at it. Nothing about the coach."

If you're a Washington fan, that's probably a bad thing.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com