It's a crucial spring practice for coach Charlie Weis, whose Fighting Irish went 3-9 last season.

He's trying something new, taking a step back from the offense to give more responsibility to coordinator Mike Haywood and rest of the staff. On defense, he hired acclaimed Jon Tenuta, most recently of Georgia Tech, as his coordinator.

"I'm going to try to cut the figurative umbilical cord and move myself a little bit away from being the sole primary guy on the offensive staff," Weis said.

"So in the springtime we'll start off with the offensive staff running the offense. That means Mike will write the scripts and set it up on offense, and that means that all the offensive coaches now won't have to worry about the ever-presence of the head coach breathing down their neck all the time.

"This is a tough one for me to do, but I'm trying to give them an opportunity to run the offense with me interjecting rather than me demanding and telling them everything that we're going to do."

Bad news is that Notre Dame had one of the worst offenses in the country last season, ranking last in total offense (242.25 yards per game) and 116th out of 119 teams in scoring (16.4 points per game).

Good news is that at least there won't be a quarterback controversy like last spring when four players competed for the job. The job belongs to sophomore Jimmy Clausen, without any kind of controversy -- except for maybe who will back him up.

Meanwhile, Weis will take on more of a supervisory role -- for the whole team, not just the offense, which has been his specialty. Overall, he wants to have a more open, friendly style with the players.

"I think if we're going to play a bunch of young guys, which we did last year, I think the one thing I have to do is make sure I'm much more approachable," Weis said.

Everyone will be watching to see if he is.

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