Eric Hansen

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - It wasn’t so much whether Notre Dame would land in Dallas or Jacksonville or El Paso this bowl season that stirred the angst among Irish fans as the longest football game in Notre Dame Stadium history came to an unceremonious thud Saturday in South Bend, Ind.

It was the dreams of 2009 that the 36-33 quadruple-overtime home loss to Pittsburgh compromised.

There is only so much blind faith that can be extracted from the stat that 23 of the 28 touchdowns scored by the Irish (5-3) this season have been by the team’s freshmen or sophomores.

Pessimists can connect dots too, and the collapsing nature of the losses at North Carolina (Oct. 11) and to Pittsburgh make Weis’ bottom line through 45 games (27-18) all the more unnerving. That’s especially true when juxtaposed against former Irish coaches of recent vintage who were considered mistakes -- Bob Davie (27-18 through 45 games) and Gerry Faust (25-19-1), the latter of whom just happened to be in the Notre Dame press box for the Pittsburgh marathon.

Perhaps none of the numbers are as important in the short term as this Notre Dame team developing a killer instinct -- or at least the ability to finish strong. Notre Dame is clobbering its opponents 52-23 in the first quarters of games and 69-44 in the second. But the numbers flatten out in the third (45-36) and reverse in the fourth -- a 44-52 season deficit.

In its last four games, Notre Dame has been outscored 42-13 in the fourth quarters, with two of those games being come-from-ahead losses and a third -- a 28-21 survival of Stanford -- getting too close for comfort at the end.

It certainly has nothing to do with depth and conditioning. The Irish rotate fresh players in throughout the game on defense and really are thin at only two positions on offense -- quarterback and tight end.

The fact that ND’s running game averages just 3.5 yards a carry and ranks 91st out of the 119 FBS schools has played into the problem. So has ultra-conservative offensive play-calling at times, and turnovers. Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis thinks the problem and the solution rests above the eyebrows.

“Once you start winning close games, (then) every time you go out there, you’re expecting something good to happen at the end of the game instead of something bad to happen at the end of the game…especially for a relatively young team. You have to win a couple of those close games, and then your momentum grows from there.”

What 2009 promises is that for the first time in three years, the Irish will have both a large and talented senior class. There are only a handful of 2008’s starters whose eligibility expires -- left offensive tackle (Mike Turkovich), wide receiver (David Grimes), defensive tackle (Pat Kuntz), defensive end (Justin Brown), linebacker (Maurice Crum), free safety (David Bruton) and cornerback (Terrail Lambert).

Only Bruton is getting mega-attention from the pro scouts. And the replacements at the other positions appear to have higher ceilings in most cases, if not just-as-bright presents, than the outgoing players.

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California running back Cierre Wood, a freshman-to-be in 2009, may elevate the Irish running game. Texan Nick Tausch brings another option to the kicking game. The pieces for a special season all seem to be apparent, but losses like Saturday’s create doubts as to whether and how that will all constellate.

The schedule is favorable. Notre Dame opens with Nevada at home and also hosts Michigan State, Washington, USC, Boston College, Navy and Connecticut. Road games are at Michigan, Purdue, Pittsburgh and Stanford. The first of many “off-site” home games over the next decade will be played Halloween in San Antonio against a woeful Washington State program.

If the Irish are going to add BCS back into their vocabularies, the seeds must be planted in the last four regular-season games of 2008. Here’s what needs to happen:

Quarterback Jimmy Clausen must start playing like a junior. His 41st national rating in passing efficiency is about what you’d expect for a sophomore and about 14 spots ahead of where predecessor Brady Quinn stood at the end of his second year. But Quinn didn’t have Weis coaching him his first two seasons.

Clausen isn’t as much a part of the problem as he is the solution. If he’s a top 10 quarterback in 2009, as Quinn was in his junior and senior seasons, the Irish offense will be overwhelming and to the point that it will help mask some of the other areas where the Irish need time to develop -- namely the running game and the defensive line. It is a similar template to what Texas Tech has used to ascend to the No. 2 spot in the latest BCS poll.

The defensive front must continue to mature. The best thing Weis is doing on his defensive front in 2008 is throwing freshmen Darius Fleming and Ethan Johnson into the mix. Neither has big numbers to this point but both have the makings to be the difference-maker type (Trevor Laws, Derek Landri, Justin Tuck) that the Irish lack in their upper classes.

The challenge is to get the rest of the D-line class to jump over the same bar next year. Of those four defensive linemen who are redshirting, end Kapron Lewis-Moore and defensive tackle Brandon Newman are the ones most likely to emerge early next season.

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