updated 1:56 p.m. ET Sept. 7, 2006

ATLANTA - At the end, Brady Quinn and the rest of that dynamic Notre Dame offense gladly settled for a couple of yards.

With the clock winding down and the game hanging in the balance — not to mention those national championship hopes — Quinn took the snap, found the slightest of gaps and burrowed up the middle like an old-fashioned fullback. He converted the fourth-and-less-than-one with about a yard to spare, just enough to finish off Georgia Tech.

“You want the players to know you have confidence in them to get half a yard when the game is on the line,” said coach Charlie Weis, clearly relieved to get out of Atlanta with a 14-10 victory Saturday night.

This was hardly the 2005 version of the Fighting Irish, who threw the ball all over the field, put up a bunch of points and struggled to keep the other team from doing the same.

The high-scoring formula produced nine wins in Weis’ rookie season and sent hopes soaring that Year 2 would be even better. Notre Dame arrived at Bobby Dodd Stadium with a No. 2 attached to its name, the school’s highest start-of-the-season ranking in a dozen years.

In a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time opener, the Fighting Irish rallied from a 10-0 deficit and hung on to win a defensive struggle. Considering they gave up a school-record 617 yards to Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl and ranked 103rd against the pass last season, that was an encouraging sign.

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“Our much-maligned defense that everybody’s been telling me about — that’s all I’ve heard this whole offseason,” Weis said. “If I hear that again, I’m going to vomit. I’ve challenged the defense every day, every day. I thought the defensive staff and defensive players showed up, and that’s the reason we won the game.”

Then again, Notre Dame stood out defensively against a team that managed only 18.5 points per game a year ago, one of the country’s lowest-scoring teams despite the presence of star receiver Calvin Johnson. Coach Chan Gailey was so disgusted with his team’s production that he fired himself as play-caller, turning over the duties to offensive coordinator Patrick Nix.

Johnson came up big in the opener with seven receptions for 111 yards, scoring Georgia Tech’s lone touchdown on a 4-yard pass. But Notre Dame doubled up on Johnson in the second half and allowed only 71 yards over the final two quarters.

“We’d get a little drive going, but we couldn’t finish it,” Nix said. “And it felt like it took a long time to get the ball back. The second half got away from us in a hurry.”

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