The only disappointment for Georgia Tech (1-0) was it was forced to settle for four field goals by Travis Bell, who had another one blocked. Jonathan Dwyer added a 7-yard TD run in the fourth quarter.

Taylor Bennett played solidly, completing 11-of-23 passes for 121 yards.

“He did some really good things, and he missed some throws that I had seen him make 50 times in practice,” Gailey said. “The great thing is, he didn’t have to go play great today. He could play good and we could still win.”

Georgia Tech had 386 yards total offense and held the Irish to 122 yards — the fewest yards for Notre Dame since it had 109 yards in a 44-13 loss at USC in 2002. Jones, Sharpley and Clausen were a combined 15-for-22 for 122 yards. Clausen, the celebrated freshman, was 4-for-6 for 34 yards.

Notre Dame tried to come out and play smash-mouth football — a stark departure from the aerial attack it used the past two seasons behind Quinn.

“We were going in there determined to try to run the ball, make sure we didn’t have negative plays, to make sure we played close to the vest early and got used to the speed of the game with the number of people that were relatively inexperienced,” Weis said. “And when it all played out, all of a sudden a couple of bad things could happen, you turn the ball over a couple of times, and they make a couple of big plays.”

The Georgia Tech offense repeatedly took advantage of good field position. The only long scoring drive for the Yellow Jackets was a 13-play, 63-yard drive in the third quarter that started on their own 16 and ended in a 39-yard field goal.

Weis said he’s not sure who the starter will be next week against Penn State, but said he will announce his decision by Tuesday.

“I have to wait to see how many of those errors are quarterback related and how many of them are protection related, how many of them are route related,” he said. “There’s a whole litany of problems right there that we have to fix.”

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