Posted by ESPN.com's Graham Watson

SOUTH BEND -- After watching Notre Dame's 21-13 win over San Diego State on Saturday, you really have to ask yourself whether you're an optimist or a pessimist.

An optimist would say that Irish fought back from adversity and grinded out a win when the odds were stacked against them.

A pessimist would say the Irish haven't improved from last season and if it were playing a more talented team than San Diego State this game would have been a blowout loss.

Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis didn't take a side.

He didn't say his team won a gutty performance and he didn't say he worried about the Irish's future. But what he did say, or at least allude to, was that this was a different Notre Dame team than year ago.

After a handful of mistakes, falling behind, 13-7, and having San Diego State knocking on the door to seal the game completely, Notre Dame stood tall, responded and fought out a win.

"Sometimes you look into players' faces and it doesn't look pretty," Weis said. "You see, I wouldn't say a scared look, but it's like a this isn't going very well look. Basically for the majority of guys that were actually playing in the game, you know, that's not the look we were getting. So I was still confident that things could work out. You can't see that because you're not just turning around looking in their faces. But I never felt, even during the stretches that things were going badly, that anyone was panicking."

To be fair, this game has to be put into perspective. San Diego State came into Notre Dame Stadium a three-touchdown underdog. Notre Dame was supposed to pound this team into the ground by halftime and have the backups cleaning up the scraps. The Irish were suppose to be able to rush the ball at will, blitz San Diego State's freshman quarterback and get a solid, confident jump on the 2008 season.

San Diego State, a team that lost to Cal Poly last week and was working with a piecemeal defensive line, gave Notre Dame all it could handle. It slowed the Irish's running game and made quarterback Jimmy Clausen look average for three quarters. The Aztecs turned Notre Dame's blitzing defense on itself with short, quick passes that sometimes went for long yardage. The San Diego State defense blitzed Clausen and though it didn't get a sack, it had a hurry, five tackles for loss and most importantly it forced four turnovers.

"We worked on a lot more blitzing this past week," San Diego State coach Chuck Long said. "We took our chances in the back end. We did put our corners on some islands as you saw, but we just stayed with it... We thought they'd smash us and try to cram that ball I there and try to smash it down our throats, but I thought our guys held up well."

Were it not for a few inches, San Diego State would have shut the door on Notre Dame early in the fourth quarter. Aztecs' running back Brandon Sullivan was inches - centimeters - from the touchdown to seal the game when free safety David Brunton hit the ball with his shoulder pad and popped it loose for a touchback.

"I just don't know last year if we would have done that in that same situation," Weis said. "So I'm very happy for the players that the game ended the way it did. You know, any time you turn the ball over that many times, you have a legitimate chance of losing. And today was one of those ones where we feel very fortunate to have been able to have won the game."

Although Notre Dame rallied for the win, there are several things that will need to be addressed before Michigan next weekend. Notre Dame had two fumbles, two interceptions, including one in the end zone, a missed field goal and a botched snap on a field goal. Michigan might not be the power that it once was, but it has a level of talent that could have capitalized on all of Notre Dame's errors and made this game a blowout.

Weis was asked whether he thought his team had made any progress from the end of last season and he reserved judgment, walking the ever thin line that a coach must walk between pessimism and optimism.

"The jury's still out because, you know, obviously utopia would be you come in here, go up and down the field, you win 100 to nothing. Guess what, it didn't play out that way," Weis said. "You have an opponent right there trying to do everything they can to try to win. They came darn close to doing it.

"I think what happens is what do you do with this now? Do you come out next week against Michigan and turn it over four times again? What happens there? Do you convert on third down better in the first half than 2 for 8? I think those are the questions that are yet to be answered."