Notre Dame football might not be as entertaining, or as good, as a year ago, but for the moment the Irish remain undefeated after beating Purdue 27-13. The game was, mostly by default, ND’s best performance of the season.
It also tied Brian Kelly with Knute Rockne with 105 wins at Notre Dame. As the NBC broadcast took pains to point out, 21 of those wins were vacated due to NCAA sanctions (whatever your opinion of them), and as they did not mention, Kelly has 39 losses, 24 more than Rockne.
However, more directly, it sent Notre Dame to 3-0 heading into a five-game stretch that includes five opponents better than anyone ND has played to date, all of whom somehow have an off week prior to the game.
Some thoughts from the win:
The Freeman defense arrives
There have been hiccups and frustrations the first two games under new defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman, but the third game offered a look at why Irish fans were so excited for his arrival. There was little spectacular, but a lot of very good. The Irish were put in bad spots a couple of times and were able to respond, holding the Boilers to field goals. The front seven was able to create havoc often enough to keep Purdue off balance and pretty much shut down the Boilers’ running game (57 yards on 25 carries) and the secondary held up pretty well for the most part.
It helps that Kyle Hamilton plays for Notre Dame. He made an out of this world tackle on a 4th-and-1 to get the Irish a big stop early in the game, and his lightning-quick reflexes earned him the game-clinching interception in the fourth quarter.
A hat tip also to JD Bertrand, whose emergence at linebacker has been a very pleasant surprise. He’s up to 34 tackles in three games.
Not as much Buchner, and that’s OK
After Tyler Buchner’s star turn against Toledo, many of us likely thought we’d see him even more against Purdue, and maybe he’d even stake his claim to the starting quarterback job.
That’s not what happened, but it was mostly in good ways. (For the record, coach Kelly said after the game that Buchner had a tight hamstring and that’s why he didn’t play after halftime.)
While it was and is frustrating to see Jack Coan take sacks behind the struggling line (the guy could make quicker decisions), Coan did well playing the entire second half, never making the kind of head-slapping mistake he did late in the first half against Toledo. He made some good deep throws (the long bomb to Avery Davis was beautiful), though his best one, to Braden Lenzy, was dropped. (Don’t stare at the sun!)
It’s a reminder to all of us that we’ll have to be patient. Buchner probably isn’t going to Trevor Lawrence this season over and guide us to the promised land. Coan, while he needs to make quicker decisions and stop overthrowing receivers, seems to be the best bet for this team in most cases right now, especially with the defense seemingly rounding into form.
Kyren Williams is still a stud
It was a tough Toledo week for Kyren, who had a key fumble and outside of one long TD run, was largely bottled up by his own offensive line, I mean, the Toledo defense. But we got a refresher Saturday that the dude is special, to the tune of 138 offensive yards and two touchdowns, plus a good punt return (two, really, but one was called back).
His 51-yard scoring run that mostly iced the game was a thing of beauty. Behind this line, it sort of feels like he should get a Heisman whenever he pulls off a run like this.
he’s really that guy@Kyrenwilliams23 | #GoIrish pic.twitter.com/xxR8IfyMwE
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) September 18, 2021
If ND is going to have a running game, Williams is going to have to make a lot of it happen on his own, and this was a terrific example of it.
And speaking of the O-line
OK, the offensive line was horrendous for much of the game. Too many sacks, again. Too many inefficient run plays, again. Way too many penalties; guys, if you’re not going to be good at pass blocking or run blocking, you can’t also knock yourself back with miscues.
BUT…they were pretty good later in the game when they had to be. Certainly the best they’ve been this season.
Admittedly, I’m grading on a curve, and also admittedly, they’re going to have to get a heck of a lot better. But it’s still progress, and for now that’s probably the best we can hope for.
Next week, Wisconsin in Chicago. Just win.
Good enough game. I was pleased with the defense, they did well. Hamilton is a freak. I think he had a very similar 4th down play against Navy in 2019 where he instantly saw the horizontal movement and shut it down. Special player.
A game like this shows the ceiling with Coan. Holds the ball too long and takes sacks. It’s CB and LB blitzes at time and not all the easy target of a not very good o-line. That last drive in the 1st half should have been points, but 2 passes Coan coulda placed better. Oh well. He’s a good QB, but still frustrating because he’s not great.
I wasn’t too impressed by the play calling, but we’ll see on further video review. Mayer was bracketed all day and Austin didn’t want to catch the ball, so it seemed. Makes life tough. Kyren to the rescue and now it’s survive and advance time for the next month.
Kind of feel like we should be happy with this game, assuming our expectations have been sufficiently adjusted to realize we’re not truly a top-20 team this year? That’s where I am, anyways.
It was certainly an improvement. It seems if the corners can hold up (and continue to improve tackling) then we can still have a top 20 D. We need the OL to continue to improve and given their relative inexperience and some youth that seems to be likely. In that case, this could still be a really good season and by the end of the year perhaps even a top 15-20 team. The hope is that we can improve just enough to beat the better teams on our schedule (which at this point is far less impressive than initially thought). If the D can make the games a low-scoring affair, then we don’t need the O to put up a ton of points.
Clemson won 14-8 against Georgia Tech today. Notre Dame will beat GT more than that.
Cincy struggled, A&M struggled last week, Oklahoma scraped by a bad Nebraska team today…Even Coastal Carolina barely won today.
Notre Dame has warts but they still have top 10sh talent. We’ll see in the next four weeks though.
Cincy was getting manhandled by Indiana until a bad targeting call took out their best defender, and changed the game literally on that play.
Indiana still had a chance to win it, but boy that targeting call destroyed their steamroller completely.
Very much uphill with 3 picks.
aTm I think could have been considered to struggle again today, as they only beat UNM 35-0. This may seem like a joke, but honestly, UNM is one of the worst teams in Div 1 football, and I believe the last time we managed to score 60 was against them
Upon further view (and looking at the new AP poll), I would like to amend my statement to say we’re definitely not one of the top 17 teams, but it is plausible we are the 18th-20th best team this year.
Everybody stinks this year. Everybody.
Georgia?
Kind of boring game for the most part. Brohm played the wrong quarterback, Plummer is pretty bad, so our D did ok, although still too many long plays allowed.
it will be interesting to see how we do vs Cinci. Indiana QB threw 3 picks (again) andCincy won by two td margin. I think both are overrated. But whether we can beat Cindy is a question mark at this point.
I think the Cindy game will be fine, it’s the Jan and Marcia games that I’m more worried about
Cindy is tougher than u think