John Walters

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Pat Kuntz stood with his back against the wall in the Notre Dame interview room, wearing a new smile and a suit. What’s the biggest difference, Kuntz was asked, between this season and last season after five games?

The 6-3, 285-pound defensive end allowed himself a chuckle. “We were 0-5 after five games last year,” Kuntz said. “That’s an easy question.”

Beneath skies as bright as Notre Dame’s gridiron future, the Fighting Irish beat Stanford 28-21 on Saturday. In so doing Notre Dame improved to 4-1, surpassing last year’s victory total in less games than it took the ’07 Irish to win their first.

The Irish were not without their flaws. They nearly allowed a 21-point fourth quarter lead to completely dissolve against the similarly improved Cardinal. The defensive front seven allowed too many rushing yards, which is why a Notre Dame safety (Kyle McCarthy - 14) led the team in tackles for a fifth consecutive game. The rushing attack again finished with the kind of yards per carry average (3.1) that, were it a grade-point average, would not be good enough to merit acceptance at Notre Dame…and certainly not at Stanford.

And the field-goal kicking? Brandon Walker missed two more on Saturday afternoon. Touchdown Jesus shields his eyes when Walker trots onto the field.

But the Irish won—again—and believe it or not, at least for a few hours on Saturday, had double the number of wins that USC did this season. Mirroring the upward trajectory of this young team—nine of Saturday’s 22 starters were underclassmen—and more responsible for it than any individual is sophomore quarterback Jimmy Clausen. The California native had his second career-best day in as many Saturdays, throwing for 347 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions.

A quick line on Clausen: In his first three games he threw six touchdown passes and six interceptions. In his last two, he has thrown six touchdown passes and no interceptions.

“We’re starting to see it, especially the last couple weeks, his evolution,” said head coach Charlie Weis. “How things are headed in the right direction. You know, he’s come a long way from that kid that we were playing last year in the Penn State game.”

Video   Weis on outlasting Stanford Oct 4: Irish coach Charlie Weis breaks down how the Irish were able to outlast Stanford, despite a late Cardinal rally.

That was an unhappy kid in Happy Valley, a second-week freshman making his first collegiate start and being sacked six times. Clausen, who was sacked once today on a safety blitz, has yet to be sacked six times this season—in 171 pass attempts.

“Yeah, you know, I feel good,” said Clausen, who completed 29 of 40. “This team feels good.”

It certainly feels better, nowhere more so than the passing game. What we are witnessing with Clausen and two of his freshmen receivers (split end Michael Floyd and tight end Kyle Rudolph) who for the second consecutive week caught touchdown passes, are the salad days of what will likely be the most prolific players at those positions in school history.

First, there is Clausen. He now has 19 touchdown passes and 12 interceptions in his first one-and-a-half seasons, approximately. Brady Quinn, the school’s all-time leader in TD tosses, had 26 touchdown passes and 25 interceptions after two full seasons. Clausen likely needs three to four games to break Quinn’s 26-TD pass mark.

Tight end Rudolph, a true freshman, now has 11 catches and two touchdowns on the season. That production as a freshman is unusual. The position has traditionally been so loaded (Dave Casper, Ken MacAfee, Tony Hunter, Mark Bavaro, Derek Brown, Irv Smith, Anthony Fasano, John Carlson—you get the point) that it normally requires someone of a more mature physical presence than a freshman.

“He’s one of the harder-working freshmen I’ve ever been around,” Weis said, noting that with Will Yeatman’s status currently in limbo, Mike Ragone out for the season, and Luke Schmidt sitting out with chronic headaches, Rudolph is basically the entire depth chart. “He knows that the team is counting on him.”

Floyd, also a true freshman, has 21 receptions and three TD catches already. He needs just 11 more catches and one more touchdown grab to tie the freshman records in both those categories. And who owns those hoary old freshmen receiving records? Sophomore Duval Kamara, who best denotes the strides this team has made in just twelve months. A year ago Kamara was the best receiving option this very limited offense had. Now just a sophomore, Kamara, who has fewer catches this season (4) than either Rudolph or Floyd had today, is waging his own one-man battle against obsolescence in this Irish offense.