Purdue 30 – Notre Dame 56
As Purdue traveled to 0-2 Notre Dame, the Boilermakers knew they were walking into a hostile environment and playing a team with its back against the wall. Notre Dame is basically one loss away from completely erasing the season, by their standards, and the Fighting Irish flexed their muscles in this game. Trick plays, defense (or lack their of), and a lengthy weather delay defined this game so let’s dive in:
Pre – Delay We are going to split this game up by when the weather
delay that acted as halftime occurred. If you will, we can consider the times BC (Before the Clearing of the stadium) and AD (After Delay). Not sure I’ve heard those terms used before, especially at Notre Dame.
The game started how I had actually wanted as Notre Dame won the coin toss and deferred. Knowing that Purdue would need to come away with points and play from ahead, it was a great chance by receiving the ball first. Notre Dame further helped the cause by booting the opening kickoff out of bounds. That’s where the positives stopped as Purdue rushed for a 1-yard gain and then a rush of no gain that was followed by an unsportsmanlike penalty on Purdue to make it 3rd and 24. ND defenders pinned their ears back and got pressure on Ryan Browne who through it away and set up a Jack McCallister punt. The very next play, CJ Carr dropped a play action pass right in the bucket of Malachi Fields on a deep ball for a 66-yard touchdown. Instead of throwing the first punch, Purdue got walloped.
Purdue’s second drive would go basically the complete opposite of the first as passed by Ryan Browne in the flat to Devin Mockobee and over the top to a diving Nitro Tuggle highlighted Purdue driving down to the Irish 9 yard line in 5 plays. After a false start on Purdue, Ryan Browne handed the ball of to Devin Mockobee who stuttered to the outside, drawing in the Notre Dame safety. Mockobee then threw a ball to the wide open Ryan Browne at the outside numbers and Browne darted in for the score. The trick play was executed to perfection and Purdue bounced right back up on offense.
The second Notre Dame drive took longer but had the same results as the first: a touchdown. This time, the Irish started with a long kickoff return by RB Jadarian Price (remember that name) and then proceeded to run 9 plays for 56 yards including three successful third down conversions. The drive was capped by a 1-yard rush into the endzone by Jeremiyah Love who finished the drive with 39 rushing yards on 7 attempts.
Now, with Notre Dame up 14-7, Purdue would move the ball down into Notre Dame territory despite a holding penalty that set Purdue up with 2nd and 20 early on in the drive. Purdue actually failed to gain the 20 yards in two plays and faced 4th and 5 at the Purdue 40 but a fake punt rush by Jack McCallister went for 10 yards and extended the drive.
Purdue would use a 20-yard pass to Michael Jackson III on 3rd and 11 to get down to the ND 31 and finished the first quarter after 2 additional plays. Following an incomplete pass on 3rd and 9, Spencer Porath kicked a career-best 48-yard field goal to make it a 14-10 game.
Just as Notre Dame had done its previous two drives, the Irish drove straight down the field on the back of Jeremiyah Love and finished the drive with a 21-yard rushing touchdown by Jadarian Price as he made several Purdue defenders miss on multiple outside cuts. This drive lasted 9 plays (8 rushing / 1 passing) and included 69 rushing yards (42 by Love, 21 by Price, and 6 by Carr). Notre Dame was turning on the jets and Purdue simply couldn’t keep up.
Now down 21-10, the Purdue offense was playing catchup and could ill-afford any mistakes or bad breaks. 3 plays into the ensuing drive, that came as Ryan Browne tried to squeeze a ball in tight coverage to Michael Jackson III on 3rd and 3 and the ball was tipped in the air and intercepted by ND’s Christian Gray. Gray returned the ball to the Purdue 36-yard line and Notre Dame would take 5 plays, all Jadarian Price rushes, to cover the 36 yards for their 4th touchdown in 4 drives.
Despite being down by 18, the Purdue offense kept trying to fight back. Getting into a rhythym, the offense made its way down the filed on chunk passes from Browne to Michael Jackson III, Nitro Tuggle, and George Burhenn. On third and 5 at the ND 8, Browne threw a dart to the back of the end zone but the ball was dropped by TE Rico Walker, leading to another Spencer Porath field goal. At this point, Purdue was trading field goals for ND touchdowns but the game was still within two scores at 28-13.
What came next had potential to be one of the biggest swings of the game in Purdue’s favor as on the first play of the ensuing drive, Myles Slusher came off the edge on CJ Carr’s blind side and sacked Carr while forcing a fumble. CJ Nunnally jumped on the ball and gave it back to the Purdue offense inside the redzone. This was the first takeaway for the defense on the season and the only sack of the day for Purdue.
Following the turnover, Purdue would start the drive with 1:40 left in the half and following a Devin Mockobee rush for no gain, Marcus Freeman called a timeout for Notre Dame that was meant to last just 30 seconds and stop the clock. Play wouldn’t resume for 2 hours as lightning was observed in the area and Notre Dame Stadium was forced to evacuate the stands. It was ultimately decided that this weather delay would act as halftime, so the teams would finish the remaining 1:31 of the first half, then immediately start the third quarter.
Post – Delay
After the 116 minute delay, Purdue came back on offense and following a catch by Arhmad Branch, Ryan Browne’s pocket collapsed and ended in a sack. Again, Purdue settled for a field goal to make it 28-16, now with 1:13 left on the clock (Notre Dame had used all 3 timeouts to stop the clock on the drive).
The kickoff following the field goal was the most controversial call of the game as a Notre Dame player appeared to wrestle a Purdue player to the ground as Jadarian Price went past. Two Purdue defenders sandwiched Price and bounced off the RB as he took the ball 100 yards for a touchdown but the aforementioned wrestling drew a flag during the play. Big Ten official, Mark Kluczynski, who threw the flag, later conferred with other officials and picked up the flag. If you pause the below highlight video at 5:47, the hold is clear and there was no reason that the flag should have been picked up. This would have set up Notre Dame on the 15-yard line with one minute left and no timeouts. Of course, this is not why Purdue would lose the game, not even close, but there is no reasonable explanation why this happened.
To Purdue’s credit, they responded and executed a perfect 2-minute drill in less than a minute where Ryan Browne completed 5-5 passes (1 spike attributed to the team) for 75 yards and a 24-yard dime to Nitro Tuggle with 7 seconds remaining in the half and a score of 35-23.
Notre Dame would not return the next kickoff and take a knee to end the half.
As mentioned before, after the end of the second quarter, there was a media timeout and instantly, the third quarter began. So ND returned 3 kickoffs in roughly 10 actual minutes with 2 being only a media timeout and 7 second apart. Interesting tidbit there.
Now, as for the second half, the third quarter was when things got scary. Simply put, Notre Dame would impose its will on Purdue by scoring 3 touchdown on 3 drives totaling 212 yards while allowing Purdue just 23 yards. Following the third touchdown that made the game 56-23, Purdue would again sputter on offense and punt the ball back to Notre Dame who would put in backup QB, Kenny Minchey. At that point, the Irish had 454 yards of offense, only faced 3rd down 5 times, converted all 5 times, and a 100-yard kickoff return. So with 9:14 left in the game, the B-squads for both teams faced off to which backup QB, Malachi Singleton threw an interception and a touchdown on a spectacular catch by Jesse Watson (the best catch of the day) while Notre Dame attempted two 4th down conversions and came up short twice and missed a 31-yard field goal (the starting ND kicker was out and freshman kicker, Erik Schmidt was in). Purdue’s opponent has now missed a field goal in every game this season and 5 times in total. Another interesting tidbit. The Irish would take 3 knees with 1:53 left and the final score was 56-30 as Purdue falls to 2-2 on the season and Notre Dame notches their first win to get to 1-2.
Stats
Purdue will get a week off as they prepare to host Illinois on October 4th. The new Taylor Swift album drops the day before, so be prepared for some new Swifty content in Ross-Ade in two weeks. Boiler Up!
