Thoughts on the Presser: WSU Edition

Charlie Weis met with the media today and broke down this week’s opponent. It was a pretty nondescript press conference, and you know Washington State is struggling when Weis comes out of the chute with this one for his opener.

“One quarter they (Washington State) have had success in this year is they’ve won the third quarter. And we’ve recently had some problems in the third quarter so that will be one of my areas of concern in this game.”

The Cougars have been pretty abysmal this season, with their only win coming in overtime against SMU. Other than that, their closest defeat has been a 13-point loss to Arizona State. So something has to give this week: The Irish’s propensity to keep games close or the Cougars inability to do the same.

While the focus of the press conference usually is to discuss the opponent, the question and answer session was mostly Irish centric, which makes sense. Here are a few interesting tidbits:

* Robert Hughes and Armando Allen are full go, and Robby Parris is probably out. Weis said that everything checked out okay for Hughes after getting his bell rung at the goal line, so he’ll be back and practicing today. Allen’s ankle continues to nag him, but that’s the way ankle sprains go. On the other hand, Weis actually hoped to keep Parris out of Saturday’s game if at all possible.

“I would say doubtful. I’ll try my best for doubtful to be out this week, You know, not the other way. I’ll try my best to not use him this week.”

I am glad Weis is keeping Parris off the field. A guy with his skill-set needs to get healthy, and this is a perfect week to get him back closer to 100 percent.

* The game in San Antonio gets categorized differently than a normal home game, and from a recruiting perspective, it’s treated differently as well. Weis was asked what the Irish can do from a recruiting perspective, especially with Texas being such a fertile area for football players.

“We appealed to the NCAA to try to get like a true home game, and the concession is we can have recruits go to the game, we can give recruits tickets to the game, but we can’t talk to them. We can get a whole bunch of recruits from the state of Texas, and we have a bunch coming, especially 2011’s. We have a bunch coming to the game, but we can’t talk to them.”

It’s got to be a little disappointing for Weis that the NCAA wouldn’t let Notre Dame conduct business like this game was a true home game, but even if the coaches can’t talk with the recruits, it can’t hurt to get some elite young prospects from the state of Texas thinking about Notre Dame, especially before Longhorns coach Mack Brown can get to them. Weis even admitted as much.

“We spot recruit Texas. See Mack has that deal going, that junior recruiting day, you know, where he looks down about half the state in about the third week of February. Where he brings in those 25 guys and says you take it now or you’re done and they all grow up wanting to go to UT and you know that locks -- most of them are going.”

* The subject of working in some younger players came up, and Weis was candid about trying to get some playing time for his younger offensive linemen. Playing games that come down to the final two minutes isn’t necessarily conducive to developing depth in your offensive line play.

“Since Nevada, you know, every game is right down to the last second of the game. You know, at the offensive line position the last thing I want do is sit there and take a sophomore and say, Okay, I want to put you in for a few plays and see how you do, you know. The offensive line you risk the quarterback getting killed. We’re going travel a bunch of offensive linemen to the game, and we’d like to have an opportunity to play a bunch of them, but, you know, the game has to present itself in such a way where you can do that.”

With the veteran group that the Irish are playing right now, it’s going to be imperative that Weis finds an opportunity to get some guys like Matt Romine, Taylor Dever, and Andrew Nuss onto the field. You’ve got to think that’s going to be one of the talking points among coaches this week, putting the foot on Wazzou’s proverbial throat and getting this game lopsided in a hurry.

* In this week’s depth chart, Kyle McCarthy is listed as the starting free safety, with Sergio Brown listed as the starting strong safety. Harrison Smith has been relagated to the “or” Sam linebacker behind Darius Fleming. It’s kind of surprising to see McCarthy, who has made so many tackles around the line of scrimmage being called a free safety, but after hearing Weis talk about it, it’s more semantics than anything.

“You know, you always have high safeties and low safeties and two-deep safeties. We have high safeties and low safeties, normally semantically the guy who is deep is the free safety. And normally the guy who has dropped down, semantically, is the strong safety. That’s why when you got that depth chart it’s just based off semantics.”

I’ve got to think this has to be a combination of Sergio Brown being one of the few Irish defenders to be good on the blitz, and Kyle being one of the more cerebral defensive backs for Notre Dame. If the Irish want to give up less explosive plays, they’ve got to make less mental breakdowns, and I think Weis is willing to give up McCarthy’s presence by the line of scrimmage in exchange for less big gains in the air.

(It also might say something about the play of a certain freshman linebacker from Hawaii.)

* It’s pretty clear this weekend is being looked at as a business trip from a football perspective. The Irish will arrive in San Antonio at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, will have a meal, go to chapel and that’s about it. Weis laughed off a question about whether or not the team will be visiting the Alamo, which I think is the exact attitude he and the coaching staff should take.

I know Notre Dame wants to make this a weekend full of events for the fans, but the last thing I’d want if I’m a player or coach is to be thrown off my weekly rhythm to participate in the barnstorming tour.

* Someone asked CW about his approach to 4th down and whether or not his philosophy had changed. Many people have noticed Weis has gone conservative a few more times this year, deciding to punt, kick a field goal, or play it safe.

“Yeah. There’s a bunch of times this year in plus territory where I punted the ball, and punted them back there. The USC game comes to mind. It was a 13-7 game, I think that was the score right before half-time, where we had a fourth down in plus territory where in the past I wouldn’t have thought about going for it and played more of a field position situation to make sure you are sitting there at that same score at half-time. But sometimes I’ll become a little more conservative than I’ve been if the past, yes.”

You can call that maturing as a head coach, trusting your field goal kicker, or not trusting your defense. I’ll call it a combo platter of all three.