Back to Purdue we go. The Fighting Irish pack up the equipment trucks, load up the team buses, and head down south to West Lafayette for game 3 of the 2024 season. This was supposed to be a focused road trip but not a game with much interest, unless you’re really into the Shillelagh Trophy, or possible, grew up in the state of Indiana. Now, Notre Dame is fighting for its life and trying to put some dark horrors behind them after last week’s debacle of a home opener.
Notre Dame (-9.5) at Purdue
Ross-Ade Stadium West Lafayette, Indiana
Date: Saturday, September 14, 2024
Time: 3:30 PM ET
TV: CBS/Paramount+
A quick reminder that Purdue didn’t play last week. They enjoyed a bye after beating Indiana State 49-0 and will now embark on 6 straight weeks of football games. The Irish will have to wait a few more weeks for their first bye of 2024. This is also Notre Dame’s last true road game until the regular season finale at USC.
Vegas Corner
This game opened up with Notre Dame as 16-point favorites quite a while back and settled in around -15 for the Irish leading into the season. Since last weekend’s loss, the line has been falling in Purdue’s favor and is now spotting the Boilermakers just 9.5 points. With an over/under of 45.5 points, Vegas likes Notre Dame to stay under 30 on offense for the game.
Weather Report
We’re looking at a pretty warm game with temperatures rising into the high 80’s with 65% humidity. Rain showers were possible but that likelihood has since disappeared as we draw closer to kickoff.. Wind in the 10 mph range is expected and should provide a breeze for the teams on offense heading towards the north end zone inside Ross-Ade Stadium.
Series History
This Saturday marks the 88th meeting between Notre Dame and Purdue. Only the Navy and USC series are longer in the history of Irish football. The Boilermakers were a staple of early Notre Dame schedules although there was a 10-year gap after 1907, and another 10-year gap after 1923 (so Rockne vs. Purdue really wasn’t much of a thing), before they featured on the slate every single year from 1946 through 2014. We’ve had the 2021 meeting in South Bend as the only game over the last decade, and this is the first visit to West Lafayette since 2013, an Irish win technically since vacated.
Fun Fact
Including vacated wins (because why not?) the Irish have won 8 straight games against Purdue. A victory on Saturday would break a tie with games from 1906-1923 where Notre Dame won 8 straight, as well. Currently, the 11-game Irish winning streak from 1986-1996 is the longest in the series. Purdue has won 3 straight on 2 separate occasions (1958-60 & 1967-69) but never 4 in a row against the Irish.
Coaching Staff
This is year 2 of the Ryan Walters era for Purdue. The 38-year old rose to prominence as a defensive assistant and later coordinator at Missouri before joining up with Bret Bielema as his DC for Illinois. After 2 seasons in Champaign, the Boilermakers hired Walters as head coach following Jeff Brohm leaving for Louisville in early December 2022.
Walters brought linebackers coach Kevin Kane with him from Illinois and he’s now the defensive coordinator for Purdue. As a team, they run effectively a 5-1-5 defense called “Air Strike” with strictly man coverage (so you’ll always see a defender running and staying with a man in motion). They will employ a trio of traditional defensive linemen, a pair of over-sized linebacker/edge rushers, and typically one linebacker with 5 defensive backs, including a single-high safety.
5-1-5 “Air Strike” defense.
Purdue’s defense is kind of known for keeping their free safety really, really, really, really deep. In the above screenshot, he’s so far from the line of scrimmage he’s not even on screen from this wide camera angle.
The offensive coordinator for Purdue is former Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell. Now 39, we last saw Harrell coordinating USC for 3 years (2019-21) going 1-2 against the Irish while averaging just under 30 points per game in those contests. He’s a disciple of the Air Raid so expect the Boilermakers to spread Notre Dame out a lot more than we saw with the approach last weekend by Northern Illinois.
Mascot
Is it a big drum? Or a train? Or Purdue Pete? All of the above? I tend to lean towards the drum when I think about Purdue sports. They used to have that cool moving train primary logo with the billowing steam trailing behind it but dropped that over a decade ago. Now, the school uses a far more boring “P” logo with no character.
What does he want??
The Purdue Pete mascot first showed up on the football sideline in 1956, so he’s almost 70 years old as a football token. According to the official university website, he was created in 1940 as a way to advertise for the school bookstore. What a corporate hack.
Portal
In our Texas A&M preview we mentioned Purdue lost All-Big Ten edge rusher Nic Scourton to the Aggies. This off-season, they also lost top receiving tight end Garrett Miller to College Station.
Offensively, 2024 has been all about reshaping the Boilermakers’ wide receiving corps. In addition to Miller, Purdue lost their other top 3 wideouts (WR Deion Burks to Oklahoma, WR TJ Sheffield to UConn, and WR Abdur-Rahmaan Yaseen to USF) to the portal gods. They’ve added a ton of size in Jahmal Edrine (6’3″ former FAU transfer coming off a knee injury in 2023), Leland Smith (6’4″ JUCO transfer from Fullerton College), and De’Nylon Morrisette (6’1″ from Georgia) with rising recruited sophomore Jaron Tibbs (6’3″) adding more depth.
Additionally, UCLA transfer Kam Brown is expected back from injury and in the two-deep. However, Georgia transfer C.J. Smith remains out with a foot injury. Purdue also added running back Reggie Love from Illinois and he’s making an impact.
Some key off-season transfers on defense include lineman Shitta Silla (Boston College) and nickelback Kyndrich Breedlove (Colorado).
Top Men
QB Hudson Card – The former Texas quarterback didn’t have a stellar 2023 debut with the Boilermakers. He was someone I was highly interested in coming to Notre Dame prior to Sam Hartman but his stock has cooled since. However, he opened up 2024 with a Xbox-like 24 of 25 performance, tying the NCAA single-game record for completion percentage.
RB Devin Mockobee – Purdue’s running game was pretty average last year and we’ll see if they can generate a ground attack on Notre Dame similar to NIU last week. Mockobee is a veteran (1,868 career yards) and should see a lot of carries on Saturday.
TE Max Klare – The redshirt sophomore from St. Xavier might get lost in the shuffle with all the talk about Purdue’s remodeled receiving corps. He caught a respectable 22 passes last year in his first big opportunity with Purdue and finished their opener leading the offense with 5 catches and 71 yards including a touchdown.
LB Kydran Jenkins – Purdue sometimes plays multiple linebackers in a traditional role but expect 5th year senior Kydran Jenkins to be on the field a ton against the Irish. He’s put up some big numbers in his career with 33.5 tackles for loss and 17.5 sacks.
Jenkins is a solid linebacker who should play a ton.
CB Tarrion Grant – Here’s a fun story of a kid who was in the 2024 class, reclassified to 2025 (where he was a Composite 5-star), and then late in the process switched back to 2024 before enrolling at Purdue this summer. As the no. 77 overall player in the 2024 Composite he’s the 2nd best recruit in modern Purdue history and won a starting job coming out of camp.
FS Dillon Thieneman – The Westfield, Indiana native is coming off maybe the best freshman season…in Purdue history!? He was named the FWAA Defensive Freshman of the Year, 2nd-team All-Big Ten, and Third-Team All-American in 2023. He’s the guy who plays deep in this defense but he’s super quick and is an extremely strong tackler. Notre Dame will have to watch out for his prowling ball skills–he finished 2nd nationally with 6 interceptions last year.
Bad Matchup
Notre Dame Establishing the Run
The entire Purdue defense is set up to clog the box and with Notre Dame’s struggles last week this does not look like a favorable matchup. A quick-hitting passing game to loosen things up–with receivers making some guys miss and moving the chains–would be a godsend but how sure can we be that this is possible right now?
Good Matchup
Purdue’s Passing Game with Sustained Success
There’s a world where Purdue’s makeover through the air is a complete success and Purdue becomes a super dangerous team in the Big Ten this year. After one game against lowly Indiana State it certainly seems to be trending that way. However, if there’s one area I really feel like Notre Dame will bounce back well this weekend it’s with their secondary play. I won’t believe in Purdue’s transformation until I see it working for a few series against the Irish.
Special Teams
It’ll be Aussie punter vs. Aussie punter in West Lafayette this weekend. The Boilermakers brought in Keeland Crimmins from Australia for 2023 and he returns as the starting punter. True freshman Spencer Porath won the place-kicking job in camp but didn’t attempt a field goal in week 1 against Indiana State.
Starting safety Thieneman returns punts while true freshman running back Elijah Jackson handles kick return duties.
Prediction
Well, the 2024 season certainly went off track last week, huh!? Earlier this week all of the talk surrounded the potential benching of quarterback Riley Leonard with this topic taking up an incredible amount of air space on the internet. That’s never a good sign so early in the season.
Later this week, reporting broke that Leonard indeed injured his non-throwing shoulder and now there’s all sorts of questions heading into this game. Is it a small and relatively minor injury? A decent sprain? A torn labrum? May I ask, what the hell is going on with Notre Dame right now?
FEI 2024 RANKINGS
| STAT | IRISH | PURDUE |
|---|---|---|
| FEI Overall | 14 | 60 |
| FEI Offense | 30 | 44 |
| FEI Defense | 7 | 62 |
There’s a weird vibe around the Irish, to say the least. Back in January, we saw an interview with a supposedly healthy Leonard who was coming off ankle surgery from his injury suffered against Notre Dame. A few weeks later, there were reports Leonard had surgery in early January which sparked an “inaccurate” statement from team doctor Rob Hunt (seen below with Leonard last weekend).
Fast forward a little bit, and Leonard ends up having surgery again and misses nearly all of spring practice to repair the ankle a second (or maybe third?) time. Now, he gets banged up against NIU, media were told not to ask about the injury after the game, and there’s evidently some form of left labrum injury for Leonard today.
That looks like it hurts.
Are we really going to see a gameplan of “Hey man, just try not to get hit hard on your left side or get tackled to the ground on that side either, okay?” Rolling with someone who is injured, at quarterback, at Notre Dame of all places, coming off one of the most rotten games in school history, is truly playing with fire.
Leonard starting, finishing the game, and playing reasonably well seems like poor odds when it’s put all together.
I wasn’t ready to predict a loss this weekend combined with thoughts that things are going to spiral out of control to 6 or 7-win season. The kindest interpretation is that Notre Dame got caught in one hell of a letdown situation last weekend, the coaching staff and players are too good to start a program-wide collapse, and a pretty decent (if somewhat ugly) win should come against the Boilers.
Taking the quarterback out of the situation for a moment, I’d be surprised if the Irish went on the road against a minor rival and looked as bad as they did last week–especially on defense. Of course, you can’t really take the quarterback out of it though, right? I’ve felt that Steve Angeli would get his opportunity again before he left Notre Dame and we look primed for something from Peanut Butter this weekend. There were rumors Angeli was receiving more 1st-team reps in practice this week but those ideas were swiftly denied by Marcus Freeman on his Thursday Zoom session with reporters.
So, it’s full steam ahead with the roles unchanged, until by hook or injury there’s a decision to move in another direction.
A lack of clarity about the QB is my biggest concern. Maybe Freeman and Denbrock have a stellar plan right now but it isn’t filling me with confidence.
I just don’t understand the info and decision making coming from the coaches. MF and Denbrock seem to be saying “what injury?” They see a guy who cannot throw the deep (or medium range) ball well, and think “let’s just keep him in there and hope that the defense doesn’t stack the box”. Well guess what, it sounds like Purdue will be stacking the line this week
And not only that, but judging from last week after the injury, he can’t run either. Or can but shouldn’t…
I think they’re hedging. Freeman is smart enough to know he can’t roll Leonard out there for 60 minutes, score 17 points, and lose. I suspect the coaches are setting up a situation where it’s OK to start Leonard due to the vague nature of his injury, but it’s also OK to pull him early so as to avoid “aggravating” that injury. That way he can be benched while everyone saves some face.
I really have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow.
I have a torn labrum, so IMO, he’ll be in a harness on that left shoulder and will be fine. If it gets hit the wrong way or put in a bad position, it will hurt like hell and then he’ll most likely be able to continue. Avoid 300lb people falling on your shoulders Riley.
I think the theme for Saturday might be, “Angeli or Angina?”
A torn labrum right now for you?
Yep….years ago, checked in a no check league. They never fixed it and if I do my exercises when it starts to get aggravated, I’m good to go. Docs say the rehab from surgery really sucks.
That damn ice hockey, gets ya a lot, they say. I grew up in South Bend, so have no clue, that was before the Compton Ice Arena or whatever. BTW, when you come for a game next year, maybe the hockey team will be playing or at least exhibiting.
Oh man, this is the first time all week i’ve successfully logged in from my phone. probably a good thing.
There are a ton of parallels between this team and 2018 and 2022 teams. 12-0 seemed impossible after ball state/vandy and the skill talent seemed horrible. The 2022 team, I at least was wondering if they would get to 3/4 wins. The big difference is kelly and the experience and cache to move off wimbush even though nd was 3-0 and then in 22 an injury forced them to reassess their offense . Like rudy says above I have no confidence in this current staff to manage this. ND could win the next 9 games like they essentially should have in 2022 post marshall but they could also lose 4 more games.
Wanted to ask this earlier in the week but what preseason camp hype was most bs. Top 5 qb room in country? Playoff caliber wide receiver core? mine is the punter? john brice kept talking about rendell booming 70 yard punts?!? I didn’t listen to II podcast this week but I heard brice was questioning freeman and pretty critical. literally one week after brice talked about freeman’s growth. brice has no credibility with me. long week. outside of 18s I mostly avoided all nd content
I can’t lie, the NIU loss is probably the most catastrophic and disastrous I’ve suffered in my time as a ND fan (circa 2009 or so) so it is going to be hard to forget about it but with that being said I think the best course of action is to be like the players. We just have to flush that out of our minds and control the controllables. Nothing we can do about the past now
I’m not gonna pretend like I know with certainty what is going to happen tomorrow but I’m gonna say it’s Notre Dame vs Purdue. Let’s get right and get moving baby.
Go Irish
If we’re just talking about losses to bad programs 2014 Northwestern is the most painful loss since 2009, but I do give NIU the advantage over Marshall or Connecticut.
2014 Northwestern
2024 NIU
2022 Marshall
2009 Connecticut
2011 South Florida
2022 Stanford
2010 Tulsa
2010 Navy
2009 Navy
By far, 2014 Northwestern is the most pain I’ve ever felt as a fan. I think I eat Chick-fil-A less in part because of it. I think NIU was less than Marshall, 2022 Stanford and 2011 USF…2010 Tulsa was also worse just because Declan was around the same time, and the program really felt like a a page out of Job: some higher power was punishing us for no reason. NIU would have been much worse had we not seen the same thing twice 2 years ago.
You young’s only think you’ve felt the pain of a most crushing loss. There is one late in the last century that will never be topped for us that were alive to experience it…..right Noise ?
Obviously BC 1993 is the worst…I thought he was making a list since 2009.
Yeah, tlndma, idocd.
BC ’93, like being bounced from the very top, being actually #1 after decisively beating #1, to in one week losing to friggin BC, in our own stadium, like, yuck. Yuck Yuck.
The program has never been the same.
That said, someone else has written more extensively on this than I ever plan to do :
https://18stripes.com/if-i-were-to-update-the-top-75-worst-losses-in-notre-dame-history/
Epic.
2014 Northwestern was horrible but we already had 2 losses at the time and the ASU game had just happened
In a lot of other stupid and bizarre ND losses they’re either barely ranked or already have losses but this was uncharted territory being top 5 and losing to an unranked team for the first time since BC 2002 which happened a little over a month after I was born
I wouldn’t put the loss particularly high on the pain list. Because by half time I was going numb again. Which happened last year after we shat the bed against OSU, barely beat Duke and then lost to Louisville. I just do not expect big things of Freeman, though I had a glimmer of hope that could change after A&M. But while the NIU loss is far from the most painful – it is the most embarrassing. Much more so than Marshall or any other of the ones you listed.
2022 Stanford won 2 other games all year. 1 was against Colgate! Marshall immediately went on to lose against Bowling Green and Troy the next 2 weeks.
We won’t know how embarrassing this loss is until NIU goes on to finish 5-7 by the end of the year. There is basically no chance NIU stays ranked by December, but until we see what terrible team beats them it is nowhere near as embarrassing.
Has to do with where the program was at the time. Marshall – we’d lost the game before albeit fairly tight against OSU. And had the Fiesta Bowl collapse the game before that. Stanford, already those three aforementioned losses in the calendar year. Stanford was/is also a tire fire of a program again but still a Power 5 opponent.
And the biggest thing, to me at least, is that in 2022, Freeman had an OC and a QB he didn’t choose.
He now has a hand-picked offense and it completely stalled out against a MAC opponent at home in year 3 while ranked in the top 5.
Tulsa is way too low on this list. Dismal atmosphere right after Declan Sullivan died from negligent decision making, bad opponent, the start of the Tommy Rees QB experience, insanely bad decision to throw a deep ball instead of just kicking a a field goal for the win, BK getting pissy at the press conference…
I was there for the game, and it felt like a “the program is over” kind of loss. Much more so than NIU.
Well, heck and damn, Eric, thanks for hanging with this preview. Its title says a lot. To that point, Tigers 039, I share your pain, but my painful losses go back way farther. What really gets me this time is that last week left HCMF as basically a dead person walking. Where I’ve been so many times before, but damn hell, it’s only early in September… Anyway, Tigers 039, you are 100% right, as fans, we flush it and focus on what we have in front of us.
Which for me is an old story, Purdue was always a tough out. They always played hard and I was around for both of those losing streaks. I was hoping that this year I wouldn’t have to stress, but having violently thrown up the koolaid, yep, I’m stressing.
A few points:
1, Yes, totally, count the vacated wins. That was all totally BS. I hereby move that 18S change all stats to encompass those so-called vacated wins.
2, The mascot is that damn drum. My very first memory of a game in the stadium was Purdue when I was like 4, down in the visitor’s corner of the south end zone where the goddamn drum was, and when they scored, all we could hear. (Now, in the early 60’s before Ara Purdue’s band featured The Golden Girls, and I will say they had quite the impact on our all-male student body… but I diverge.)
3, Torn labrum? Did I hear that Baker Mayfield had one on his non-throwing shoulder when at Cleveland, and played through it, and much to his (and the Browns’) detriment?
Even my partner recognized the meaninglessness of this season after the NIU game, so your boy is now being taken to a wine festival instead of watching football
Cons: I have to listen to ex-sorority sisters for hours
Pros: I am going to get obliterated
i think this is how the team prepped last friday
Oof. Embarrassing. For the program, not the predictor
anyone got the preview score for north carolina 2022? I cannot imagine that predicted nd kicking their ass and this team feels like it’s in same spot
Click me
Actual score: ND 45-32
Official 18 Stripes score prediction: ND 31-27