Upon Further Review: Notre Dame

The day after most Purdue football games this season, GoldandBlack.com will rewatch the contest in an attempt to break down or highlight some of the finer points.

Understand, we do not have 11-on-11 video nor do we have either team’s playbook, so this will generally be a layman’s view on things.

Today: Purdue’s 56-30 loss at Notre Dame

PDF: Purdue-Notre Dame statistics

PURDUE DEFENSE

Long story short: Purdue was just overmatched by Notre Dame physically, and that put the Boilermaker defense on a string.

This is Notre Dame’s first play. They’re loaded up with seven men on the line, screaming run. Purdue is compact on defense here, signaling zone coverage. Because ND is in its gigantic personnel, that obviously jibes with pass protection, too.

Purdue has no chance to get to the QB, no help over the top and CJ Carr makes a perfect throw.

Now, Purdue is softened up even more than it’s overmatched and the physical punishment Notre Dame is applying is clearly a cause of Purdue’s atrocious tackling.

So confident was Notre Dame in its ability to overpower Purdue it made a real statement early on by running the ball on back-to-back third downs. Not like third-and-inches, either.

Here’s both. On the first, Purdue run a little run-blitz stunt with its linebackers that gets swallowed whole; the second is just a man-mandling.

Left side, right side, three-man front, four-man front, it didn’t really matter.

Purdue has solid linebackers, but they are built better for playing in space than between the tackles.

The linebacker flowing to the ball has to get these seams closed off, ideally not eight yards down the field as happens here with Charles Correa.

Here, it’s Alex Sanford who’s positioned to come free, but he misses.

Purdue have a number of opportunities for that one free man to make a one-on-one play and didn’t get enough of them.

Just highlighting this play to credit the offense.

The lateral movement here to keep stringing Purdue out and ultimately leading to this big deal is an element that differentiates good college backs who get what’s blocked and NFL guys.

PURDUE OFFENSE

Purdue had the same issues on offense with physicality. The offensive line just didn’t have the horses.

Look what 97 does here.

But Purdue did a really nice job being creative and Ryan Browne made plays outside the system and some really nice throws up the field.

Browne, relatively surprisingly, is really good at these outside-shoulder deep throws, which are not easy throws.

This was really well conceived. Can’t see I’ve ever seen someone do this quite like this.

Great execution by Devin Mockobee to take that lateral step to make sure he was behind the line of scrimmage, so this wouldn’t have to be a backward pass. Interesting that ND’s back-end defenders bit so hard inside on this since Browne is an option-keeper threat to that side, but no one ever could have seen this coming.

Browne’s one real consequential mistake was the INT.

That’s a man-to-man route he was throwing, but ND dropped into zone.

Earlier, the Irish had shown man in a similar medium-yardage situation.

THE FAKE PUNT

Gutsy call right out of the gate from Purdue.

Really smart design here, using the side-by-side-side personal protectors as a floating offensive line out in the open and angling the play to where that last of the three blockers is staggered and position to clip the oncoming, straight-ahead rush and allow the ball-carrier to get the corner, after a bunch of others had already passed by him.

Smart here, too, by Tahj Ra-El (21) to recognize the play is gonna work and just throwing a hip into his block while showing his hands to make sure there’s no illusion of holding.

MISC.

• Look, people get held on kickoff returns all the time and they don’t get called. For it to get called, then uncalled is hard to fathom.

That said, this tackle has to be made at at the 24-yard line, where two Purdue players bounce off the ball carrier. This is egregious.

• What a catch by Jesse Watson, who has dropped some passes this season but also shown some real promise.