ND-UW: Charlie Weis quotes

Jon Martone attended Charlie Weis' post-game press conference, and here's what he had to say about Notre Dame's 33-7 win over Washington at Husky Stadium Saturday night.

On the defense - “Until that last drive they didn’t even get across mid-field. That’s a heck of a performance. They put a lot of heat on the quarterback and pretty well shut down the run game. That’s as good as defense as we’ve played in quite some time.”

On scoring quickly - “I think any time you come off a layover, when you’re off your normal ritual where you’re used to playing week after week, and obviously the last game we come off a loss on top of it. I was really concerned and wanted to make sure we didn’t come out flat in the game. I put in on the coaches to be aggressive and play calls early in the game so we could get on top of the early. When you have a team that is wounded I think if you let them hang around you couple yourself in a very vulnerable position, so we felt today it was important in the first quarter to get on top of them.”

On him and Willingham - “We talked before the game. I think we both felt, talking about 2005 we were glad to get it out of the way then. I think the media keeps it going more then we keep it going. There was no feeling of that on our team and I don’t think there was any feeling of that on their team.”

On Jimmy Clausen - “He came out hot in the first quarter.” He said the timing was off after the first quarter so they worked on quick throws to get their timing back. He said in the third quarter he thinks they got back their timing.

On going for so many 4th downs - “There was a wind going in one direction. We really wanted to get to the 25 yard line when we were going to our left and the 30 yard line when we were going to our right because there was about a 10 mile per hour wind.” He said their kicker is just getting his confidence back so they didn’t want to kick a field goal from the 30-yard line when they told him he would kick from the 25-yard line. They also thought the call did was a potential first down play.

On Michael Floyd - “Every one looks at him and says ‘they don’t know how fast he is’ but then you slip one out to him and next thing you know he takes it to the house. Or you throw a fade route and there’s a good chance he’ll run route by him.” “He’s a big-bodied kid that has deceptive speed and good ball skills.”

On the fake punt - He said he thought about using before the half ran out but decided to save it so nothing bad would happen. He said they executed the fake punt just the way they practice it. He also said the fake punt is only when they see the other team in a certain formation, and UW was in that exact formation so they didn’t check out of it.

On Washington scoring - “The third quarter is 27 to nothing. I’m not that type of guy as you saw us, we yanked everyone early in the 4th quarter. The one touchdown they got was against a bunch of guys that never play, so that’s not our deal.”

On the special teams - He said most the punts were short so they didn’t get very many opportunities to return because of all the short fair catches. Overall he thought the play was solid on special teams.