Ex-UW assistant testing new offense at Notre Dame

Bill Diedrick will look across the field Saturday and see one of his best friends in Keith Gilbertson.

He will also see a Washington Huskies team he worked with for four years, becoming forever linked with one of the program's most infamous on-field moments before leaving.

Diedrick, 57, was UW's offensive coordinator in 1994 and called the pass play at Oregon that resulted in the Kenny Wheaton interception return for a touchdown that led to one of Washington's most devastating losses ever and is often targeted as the beginning of the rise of the Ducks' program.

"Things happen, and you move on," Diedrick said yesterday.

Diedrick has done just that. After leaving UW after the 1997 season, he was hired at Stanford by Tyrone Willingham to be the Cardinal's offensive coordinator. When Willingham took the Notre Dame job following the 2001 season, he brought Diedrick with him to South Bend, where the Fighting Irish will host the Huskies Saturday at 12:30 p.m.

Together, the two are attempting to alter Notre Dame's longtime offensive philosophy, which revolved around the option, and install a pro-style West Coast offense.

Many around the program welcomed the change, saying it was needed to attract top skill-position recruits who have their eye on the NFL.

But such change doesn't come easily, and Notre Dame's offense bore the brunt of the criticism during the team's fall last season — the Irish scored 16 or fewer points in half of their 12 games and were shut out twice en route to a 5-7 record.

"It's been a struggle," Diedrick said in a phone interview of attempting to change Notre Dame's offensive philosophy. "I don't think there's any other way to put it. From the very beginning, it has been a struggle. The one thing we knew was that it was going to take some time and you have to just kind of weather the storm and stay the course. That's what we've been able to do and I think we are getting closer and closer to having the personnel plugged in that we would like to have."

That transition started midway through last season, when the team dumped two-year starting quarterback Carlyle Holiday — whose forte was running the ball — in favor of Brady Quinn, a prototype dropback passer.

But Diedrick has weathered quarterback controversies before. He was the offensive coordinator at Washington State in 1990 when the Cougars dropped senior starter Brad Gossen and junior Aaron Garcia in favor of a freshman named Drew Bledsoe. And it was during his time as QB coach at UW that Shane Fortney quit the team.

But that's all part of what comes with coaching, which Diedrick began as a graduate assistant at Hawaii in 1970. It was there that Diedrick — a Spokane native — met Gilbertson, who was then a defensive lineman for the Rainbows. The two immediately bonded, drawn together by their Washington roots.

Asked what kind of player Gilbertson was, Diedrick laughed and said, "I'm not going to comment."

Diedrick, though, says "I definitely consider him one of my best friends."

When Gilbertson got his first head-coaching job at Idaho in 1986, he hired Diedrick as his offensive coordinator, and the two led the Vandals to a 28-9 record over three years.

A few years later, Diedrick found himself as offensive coordinator at UW.

In his first season, 1994, the team was 5-1 and ranked No. 9 in the country when it traveled to Oregon. With less than a minute left and trailing 24-20, the Huskies were standing at the Oregon 8-yard-line ready to steal a win. But on first down, Damon Huard's pass on an out route intended for Dave Janoski was intercepted by Wheaton and returned 97 yards for a TD, clinching an Oregon win that started the Ducks on their way to the Rose Bowl. The play has been called the most famous in Oregon history and is still re-shown before every Ducks game. That loss began a streak of five defeats in seven years to the Ducks that helped tilt the power of Northwest football in the Pac-10 toward Eugene in the late '90s.

"Kenny Wheaton gambled and won," Diedrick said. "We talked about the play, and it didn't work out like we had intended it, unfortunately. In this profession, you have plays that sometimes work out and sometimes those that don't. Unfortunately, that was one that didn't."

Though the Huskies won a share of the Pac-10 title the next year, Diedrick was removed as coordinator the following year and replaced by Scott Linehan, and spent the 1996 and '97 seasons coaching quarterbacks.

He left UW after the 1997 season for Stanford, intrigued by Willingham and being a coordinator again.

As for a UW legacy, he'd prefer it to be Marques Tuiasosopo over Kenny Wheaton — Tuiasosopo was a freshman during Diedrick's final year as QB coach.

"There were only two people on the entire staff who felt like Marques would be a quarterback, that was myself and (linebackers coach and recruiting coordinator) Dick Baird," Diedrick said. "Everybody else said, 'No way, he's going to be a safety.' "

Life changed again for Diedrick after the 2001 season, which ended with Stanford in the Seattle Bowl. After the Cardinal lost to Georgia Tech, Diedrick took a vacation to San Diego, shutting off his cellphone.

While watching WSU play in the Sun Bowl on New Year's Eve, he learned that Willingham had been named head coach at Notre Dame. He checked his cellphone to find dozens of messages, the first from Willingham telling him the news. Soon, he was packing up and following Willingham, ready to become the offensive coordinator of the most storied program in college football history.

"It's funny how things work out," he said. "But that's just the nature of this profession."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com