Purdue fans piled into Ross-Ade Stadium on Saturday afternoon feeling confident in an upset over a reeling Notre Dame program. It didn’t take long for their disappointment to be immeasurable as the Fighting Irish didn’t just bounce back they turbo-jumped into the largest win by scoring margin in rivalry history.
Let’s review Notre Dame’s 2nd win of 2024 (wish it was 3 still though).
QUARTERBACK: B+
Well, we saw Steve Angeli play just like we all expected. And Kenny Minchey. And CJ Carr. And yes, Riley Leonard got the start and looked better as a passer, incredibly dangerous as a runner, and somewhat perplexingly, not really hurt at all!?
This game was largely about Notre Dame dominating on the ground, although the passing game had some strong moments. There were some pop passes early and more quick reads from Leonard to get playmakers the ball in space…and it worked. Some play-action also worked, serving up a bunch of unexciting but effective short chain-moving throws.
The quarterbacks running for 124 yards (100 from Leonard) on 15 carries (with sacks removed) was tremendous. That was almost 3 times as many yards as Purdue would rush for as a team on Saturday.
Leonard was a little scattered at times in the passing game, although he exited early with only 5 incompletions. At this rate, it’s more about the plays he’s not making through the air.
Angeli came in and quickly looked sharp throwing the ball highlighted by a too-easy play-action touchdown pass on his first attempt and later a sideline fade absolute dime. Freeman is not going to bench Leonard by all accounts but man Angeli throws a really nice ball and has continued showing very good accuracy in his small sample size during games.
RUNNING BACK: A
All 5 running backs received carries in the game, so that’s fun. Jeremiyah Love led the way as the star showcasing brutal athleticism that made Purdue look really slow and off pace. Love’s 109 yards (on just 10 carries!) led the game and he also chipped in 18 receiving yards.
Jadarian Price was bottled up quite a bit on the afternoon, one of the more peculiar things to happen that wasn’t pure joy for Notre Dame. However, he mixed in a 70-yard touchdown run in what I’ll affectionally call a George Atkinson III (RIP) performance.
Aneyas Williams’ lone 9-yard run was a nice pickup earlier in the game on a 3rd and long opportunity. Kedren Young mixed in several hard runs at the end of the game.
WIDE RECEIVER: B
Neither Jaden Greathouse (he had a nice catch called back on a holding call) nor Kris Mitchell caught passes on the day. Garbage time came really early in this game to be fair. Up until that point, the Irish receivers hadn’t done a whole lot. Jayden Thomas showed some spark of his old self and Beaux Collins made a play or two. That was about it.
In total, there were only 105 yards from the wide receivers on the afternoon. In a 59-point blowout that’s kind of amazing. It’s like Notre Dame was more of a service academy against Purdue. In fact, Jayden Harrison (2 catches for 4 yards prior to today) led the way with 47 yards, thanks to that dime from Angeli in the 3rd quarter.
TIGHT END: A
Everybody got in on the action with the tight ends really picking up the offense in the passing game with Leonard in at quarterback. They combined for only 8 receptions but in a game with only 26 pass attempts it felt way more impactful.
Kevin Bauman also scored his 1st career touchdown, congratulations to him.
OFFENSIVE LINE: A-
The story from this game will be the injuries of course. It looked like Billy Schrauth suffered a season-ending knee injury, although maybe we’ll get lucky and it won’t be quite that bad. Irish center Ashton Craig also exited with an injury. If there’s any silver lining it’s that there are depth pieces to rely on with the interior players. If either were tackles, this offense would be in deep, deep trouble.
Purdue’s defense looked entirely incapable of making plays and I’ll credit the Notre Dame offensive line with creating that blueprint.
DEFENSIVE LINE: A+
Domination. THIS is the defensive line that people had been raving about in the pre-season. I don’t know if there wasn’t enough attention paid to Purdue’s offensive line possibly being super bad, but the Boilermakers looked wholly unprepared to deal with the Irish intensity and speed up front.
The injury to Jordan Botelho really sucks and looks like it’ll end his season (maybe he’ll come back for 2025?) after flashing some dominant snaps in the game.
At times, this looked like a video game on easy mode. Everyone on the line were making plays and swarming to the ball if they weren’t already having a party in the backfield around Hudson Card.
LINEBACKERS: A+
Things were so strong up front we didn’t see a ton of things to be cleaned up at the 2nd level for Notre Dame. With sacks removed, Purdue ran for 78 yards with long runs of 11 and 10 yards, respectively.
The youth movement continues with Jaiden Ausberry playing a lot early and KVA making his mark (with an interception to boot) on a couple of really impressive tackles.
SECONDARY: A+
A pair of Irish defensive backs ran into each other resulting in Purdue’s longest play of the day for 52 yards. Should that drop the grade down from an A+ or no?
Beyond that completion, Hudson Card went 10 of 23 for 72 yards with 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions. He was lucky it wasn’t at least a couple more interceptions, too. For an Air Raid offense this was an abysmal performance from Purdue and the type that probably shakes up their fanbase almost as much as Notre Dame’s was last weekend. Almost.
NOTES:
This game tied for the most points scored by Notre Dame since the September 14th win over New Mexico 5 years ago to the day. It was also the most points scored against a Power program on the road since the Irish beat Pittsburgh 69-13 back in 1965.
Notre Dame had 4 sacks but only 1 additional tackle for loss in the game. I was floored to see that.
It had been a while since we played there and Purdue’s stadium had a distinct Group of 5 feel to it. The layout makes it look more like one of the MLS stadiums you see scattered throughout the country. I wouldn’t have guessed it fit over 61,000 people. Not that many were remaining in the 2nd half, though.
That’s tough for Purdue who had 2 weeks to prepare and served up maybe the worst loss in school history. Everyone overreacts after bad losses (don’t we knowwwww) and the Ryan Walters era isn’t looking so hot right now. He’s now 4-8 against Power programs.
Again, the logo placement, what is going on?
All-American safety Dillon Thieneman led Purdue with 9 tackles and finished with a sack. Normally, a pretty good day at the office. However, he was abused several times and missed a bunch of tackles to allow big Notre Dame gains. I don’t think the heavy man coverage works really well for Purdue against superior athletes.
Notre Dame ended the game +5.0 in YPP, truly an ass kicking.
More fun, Notre Dame’s biggest 11 rushing plays were 109 more yards than Purdue gained as an offense.
This tied the Pittsburgh 2020 game for the fewest yards allowed by Notre Dame against a Power 4 program in recent memory.
With Botelho’s injury we’ll need Boubacar Traore to step up even more. He had quite the impactful day with 1 sack, another tackle for loss, a quarterback hurry, and the pick six.
My recruiting grade for Kennedy Urlacher was 81 which is fine but nothing special. He was the no. 641 overall player in the 2024 Composite but holy crap does it look like the Irish struck gold with this safety gem. If he can be an assignment correct proven leader at the back his speed and tenacity could make him special. Will we see an Urlacher-Shuler starting combination in 2025?
We need to be talking more about Colgate grad transfer Max Hurleman. First of all, they have him playing corner, so he’s a rare white corner, after playing running back for ‘Gate in the Patriot League. Secondly, he’s got some speed, quickness, and shiftiness to him! And he’s not small, either. Listed at 202 pounds I liked what I saw from his punt returns on Saturday.
For as fun as this game was, Notre Dame still needs to focus on improving throwing the ball. We know this type of game isn’t going to work against the better teams. Do we think going to Angeli so quickly to start the 2nd half is an indication maybe he’ll be inserted into the lineup a little more to spark the passing game? Do we even want that quarterback juggling? Or is it only worth it if Angeli starts and Leonard comes in as the change of pace guy?
Leonard had that shoulder taped or in a harness as I thought. Is our offense with him Tebowish ? Can’t win with this offense vs. the good teams? If the defense shows up, they can. Yes, it would be nice if Leonard improves his passing. We need Leonard to start seeing the wide open guys on time, especially the deep ones. Is that something more time in the system will allow? IDK.
I was all over recruiting Urlacher, I look to be quite wrong. Fingers crossed for Craig and Schrauth….Sadly, Botelho looks done.
Eric did you see my comment in your Week 3 picks column ? How did your long ride go ?
Tommy, yep, that’s my upcheck, and my comment just out is somewhat complementary with yours I think.
It went really well, about as good as I could’ve expected. I’m pretty sore today. Tried to hang on in the leading group of 4 other riders for 20 minutes but at ~200 watts it’s low threshold Zone 4 for me and I had to back off.
77 miles, 4:21:07, 17.7 mph, 180 watts normalized power. I spent a lot of time riding alone stuck between 2 groups which kind of sucked.
At that distance I’d be happy to finish. I would most likely but probably an hour longer, at least.
Taking off from the point about Purdue’s heavy man looks not working so well against superior athletes, if I understood the former Purdue QB’s TV announcer comment, Riley misfired on the couple times when Purdue dropped into zone. If true, that reinforces the concerns from the first two games that he is not seeing the field well at all. Hence one can attribute his relative passing success to Denbrook (finally!) putting him in good play calls suited to his limited talents.
Which as pointed out will not work against superior opponents (especially when coupled with our WRs not being A+ guys or at least not so far). Which totally underlines the pertinence of the big issue about how to use Angeli!
Hey look if you took the good parts from Leonard and Angeli you’d have Cam Newton
I kind of called this. I said pregame this had unc 2022 vibes (probably should have mentioned that purdue doesn’t have drake maye).
For all the hand wringing about being 3-0 if they play angeli against niu. aren’t they 3-0 if they run leonard at this rate too? I know eric mentioned it post niu, but riley had 5 carries on that opening drive and not much thereafter. He’s pretty tough as a passer, they need to run him like a rb and if he gets hurt there are viable options behind him.
Angelia throws a beautiful ball. We would think a lot more of this wr room with him as qb. But man there are some unathletic plays from him. I wasn’t super locked in in second half but he took an rpo had a db 1 on 1 and somehow took a sack. it was pretty gross looking. Anyways i’d run leonard a ton and if he gets hurt hey I would be willing to give angeli a chance.
I went to college gameday yesterday and the subsequent game that followed and my phone died so I had no frame of reference on how the game was going outside of asking a buddy on the way back from the game how much time was left in the ND game
Safe to say I was not expecting to turn my tv on and find it 35-0 and I surely was not expecting to see Price score on a 1st and 20 to make it 42-0
It’s a start, I guess,
Hypothesis: NIU is actually really good and is this year’s G5 Cinderella.
Like 2021 Cincinnati.
I had to miss the 2nd half due to another commitment (thank God there was no drama by halftime) but I did notice that Kenny Minchey scored a TD, and it was a running TD. Why isn’t his run shown in the official statistics?
I did look at a Purdue site last night and was struck by how many of their fans were saying ND still isn’t very good and only won because Purdue was so bad. I thought it was interesting that they were willing to throw their own team under the bus in order to feed their hatred of ND.