Purdue Postgame

NDVirginia19 said:

It was such a bizarre post, because it also included CJ walking in untouched the next play

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Someone should post this dude's PFF score from yesterday and tag him in it

NDFAN2008 said:

Yeah i’m gonna go out on a limb and say we see two guys leave from the RB room this offseason. Will be interesting to see how things play out because most have eligibility left and none of them are NFL good.

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Not sure that's such a limb. We have five RBs. Only three play. And the most talented of those is probably the freshman. As of now I'd expect Walton and one of Williams/James are our primary RBs next season.
I can't remember if he was an EE, but if he was, Aneyas probably graduates this spring, for what that's worth. Could see him sticking for that and then moving on.

arrowryan said:

From my understanding, Kedren Young logged zero snaps in a 39 point win. Good luck at your next school.

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This is one thing I got majorly wrong before the season, and I also have to wonder what is going on behind the scenes that we don't see. They have completely written him off after very limited reps.

How am I supposed to feel about Gi’bran killing it for the bearcats?

Jimmy3Putt said:

I laughed when the broadcast kept saying they were milking the clock to stop Ash from adjusting the defense.

No, they were trying to GTFO of Dodge as quickly as possible.



This is everything I've dreamed for as a fan and I intend to enjoy and rewatch every game as much as possible.

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If you are a massive underdog, you naturally want to limit the number of possessions and pray you get lucky. More possessions = less variance = better team wins. Once we started teeing off on Browne, they became legitimately scared. They pulled him super early because they didn't want to risk injury in a game they had a 0.0% chance of winning.

SoIll said:

How am I supposed to feel about Gi’bran killing it for the bearcats?

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Happy for Payne would be a decent emotion

Dale said:

Happy for Payne would be a decent emotion

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That would be the adult like response to this situation, would it not?

Dale said:

For the question I posed, I don’t care what the secondary is doing. If you know run/pass, your pass rush get off will be exceptional.

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You might be right, Dale, idk.

That might be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me on the board.
But as a middle aged white guy, my pass rush has never been described as exceptional. 😆

Purdue is gonna be our 2025 Arkansas. Already the close losses to UCLA and Wake in OT. Score points, awful D. Will put up points all B1G season but probably win a game or two at most

arrowryan said:

I agree with the lack of upside from James, but you have to roll with him. I’ll take his 4-6 yard carries all day long.

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I went back and watched all of the running plays and the main benefit to James seems to be that if he's 1v1 with an unblocked player at the LOS then he has the most ability to break a tackle and turn a negative into a positive. Just has really good balance and low center of gravity.

Williams -- what he showed the past two years, and saw a bit yesterday -- has like the totally opposite situation. Once he gets to the second level he is pretty hard to bring down, he bounces off guys and can create big plays. He has a lot of big runs in limited reps 2024 and 2025. His issue is getting through contact at the LOS. He has way too many plays where he gets stuffed if it isn't cleanly blocked. He was way more successful against Purdue because he had more open holes and cleanly blocked plays.

James has got to be your goal line and 3rd & 2 guy. You can definitely make an argument for Williams for standard downs or 3rd & Medium+. But Williams is not going to run anyone over at the LOS nor is going to break and arm tackle.

Walton has by far the most upside but you can tell he is not a finished product. Puppy with big paws.

But all of this aside it is crazy how often in our "inside zone" plays there are just multiple people totally unblocked. I don't know enough about football or OL play to say why that is. But we have, overall, been wayyyyyy more successful with Power and outside zone when you watch the plays. So some of this might not be on the RBs very much at all and the difference is James making up for other issues whereas Williams does not.

Dale said:

Happy for Payne would be a decent emotion

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Why wouldn’t anyone be happy for him?

Obviously my comment was in reference to how he’d fair for Notre Dame if he was on the roster.

But a smartass comment from you towards me? Shocker.

SoIll said:

Why wouldn’t anyone be happy for him?

Obviously my comment was in reference to how he’d fair for Notre Dame if he was on the roster.

But a smartass comment from you towards me? Shocker.

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Nobody misses the implication of a large majority of your posts

Dale said:

Nobody misses the implication of a large majority of your posts

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whatever bro. Hope you have a blessed Sunday

Dale said:

For the question I posed, I don’t care what the secondary is doing. If you know run/pass, your pass rush get off will be exceptional.

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Unless the dline isn't getting the tell and only the lbs are

NDFAN2008 said:

Yeah i’m gonna go out on a limb and say we see two guys leave from the RB room this offseason. Will be interesting to see how things play out because most have eligibility left and none of them are NFL good.

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I could see James sticking around. I like him out of the backfield as a receiver

I think with Williams he has shown better as the #2/change of pace vs lead.

NDdomer2 said:

Unless the dline isn't getting the tell and only the lbs are

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Why would they not tell their DL? Seems like valuable information to share

I was ecstatic to see a wheel route. My one disappointment was Carr not checking down to Walton.

Dale said:

Why would they not tell their DL? Seems like valuable information to share

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I'm just playing devil's advocate. Could it be timing of tell?

NDdomer2 said:

I'm just playing devil's advocate. Could it be timing of tell?

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I do not think there is a tell. I do think there is predictability and teams know ND is going to error on the side of run. So be aggressive as hell and if the WRs break one, so be it. They can get scored on many different ways, but if ND runs it at you with 5 yard chunks each play because you are concerned about the pass is a fools game. USC did that last year. If I was going to die as a dc, that is how I would do it.

IrishLax said:

I went back and watched all of the running plays and the main benefit to James seems to be that if he's 1v1 with an unblocked player at the LOS then he has the most ability to break a tackle and turn a negative into a positive. Just has really good balance and low center of gravity.

Williams -- what he showed the past two years, and saw a bit yesterday -- has like the totally opposite situation. Once he gets to the second level he is pretty hard to bring down, he bounces off guys and can create big plays. He has a lot of big runs in limited reps 2024 and 2025. His issue is getting through contact at the LOS. He has way too many plays where he gets stuffed if it isn't cleanly blocked. He was way more successful against Purdue because he had more open holes and cleanly blocked plays.

James has got to be your goal line and 3rd & 2 guy. You can definitely make an argument for Williams for standard downs or 3rd & Medium+. But Williams is not going to run anyone over at the LOS nor is going to break and arm tackle.

Walton has by far the most upside but you can tell he is not a finished product. Puppy with big paws.

But all of this aside it is crazy how often in our "inside zone" plays there are just multiple people totally unblocked. I don't know enough about football or OL play to say why that is. But we have, overall, been wayyyyyy more successful with Power and outside zone when you watch the plays. So some of this might not be on the RBs very much at all and the difference is James making up for other issues whereas Williams does not.

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I would add that James has been way more effective as a receiver so far this year.

pumpdog20 said:

Defense's really just don't care early on in games about anything other than stopping the run and we run right into the run blitz. I think Denbrock, probably by mandate from MFMF, just wants to get the running game going so bad that we are just going to pound into a wall until it topples over.

If establishing the run wasn't so important to this program, we'd probably have 250 yards passing by halftime each game off of play action.

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It’s like a boxer working the body in the early rounds. It happened in both Wisconsin and Sparty games and both defenses completely wore down in the 2nd half because of it.

If teams are going to continue to sell out to stop the run, it’s a big advantage for ND and their special QB

I think it was on our 2nd to last touchdown drive when the starters were still in, down at the Purdue ~20 yard line, they ran an off tackle run to the left with Aneyas and it was completely wide open. Black sealed the edge perfectly and there was no backer over there. It made me wonder why we don't run off tackle or outside zone more, but perhaps that is the goal. Pound inside zone and then break the tendency when you need to?

Postgame Thoughts (listening on the radio):
1. What a year Bryce Young is having
2. JOB played like an upperclassman
3. Will any team before Miami have the guts to throw towards Leonard Moore?
4. The Carr-Gilbert connection in fall camp keeps paying off
5. Confidence booster for Williams?
6. Another TE touchdown
7. Let's put up 60 points vs UNC

Go Irish!!

Payne doing great at Cincy. He would be outperforming what we’ve done so far.

Ndaccountant said:

I do not think there is a tell. I do think there is predictability and teams know ND is going to error on the side of run. So be aggressive as hell and if the WRs break one, so be it. They can get scored on many different ways, but if ND runs it at you with 5 yard chunks each play because you are concerned about the pass is a fools game. USC did that last year. If I was going to die as a dc, that is how I would do it.

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Also think the idea of there being a "tell" is sort of wishful thinking from a critical/nervous fanbase. Yes, it would be awesome if the main reason the running game looks mediocre at times is because there is some secret easily fixable thing. The more likely reality is that we are the sort of team that will have trouble running if the opposing defense sells out to stop the run.

greyhammer90 said:

Also think the idea of there being a "tell" is sort of wishful thinking from a critical/nervous fanbase. Yes, it would be awesome if the main reason the running game looks mediocre at times is because there is some secret easily fixable thing. The more likely reality is that we are the sort of team that will have trouble running if the opposing defense sells out to stop the run.

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Exactly. Which is why we need more plays like the quick slant to Gilbert. Throw that to any of the WRs once a game and it can be a significant deterrent.

stlnd01 said:

Sparty and Purdue were like Bob Davie's Kryptonite. How times have changed.

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He somehow beat USC in his last year in 2001 though, and that was the last time we beat USC for a long time. Ater Boob beat Cheatey Petey in Pete's first game. Pete actually said "Not happening again." and he was right. Never lost another game to us until he had to tuck tail and run out of LA after '09.

There's no way #4 posted this... it must be a shop

I rewatched every 1st team running play trying to look for tells. I really couldn't identify anything. In the pistol formation CJ does signal behind his back. The very first running play he actually had the signals held in the small of his lower back when he rotated around and said something to james. In theory the defense could see what he was holding but I think the fact that he made a signal at all is the closest thing to a tell. They really only had one more pistol run throughout the first half where he also made a hand signal. Most of the other runs were out of shotgun with either the running back left or right.

You can see Denbrock starting to do some more creative things with tight ends moving in and then making it a passing play. There were a few of the fake screen formations that went for passes, notably the Micah Gilbert catch and run.

Going back, the biggest issue actually is offensive line blocking. There were a bunch of reps that Knapp didn't look good. When we have our linemen pulling they run very very poorly in general out of those types of plays. Ashton Craig also is blocking quite poorly at the center position so I wonder if coming back from injury is still causing him some issues. I know I'm not the first one to think that. A lot of plays were blown up because blocks weren't held. There was one outside run by Williams that was well blocked by the line but Michael Gilbert look completely disinterested and blocking and the cornerback made the tackle. Could have gone for 10 yards easily if not for that.

Combination of some poor individual efforts and poor blocking, but this also applies to the wide receivers. We really did not do well running pin and pull schemes. I thought when they ran power and Duo it was a lot easier. We also run into a lot of really tight boxes where the linebackers are sitting four yards off online of scrimmage and come screaming in. There were multiple plays where linebackers were at or beyond the line of scrimmage already when the handoff was taking place out of shotgun.

Not that I have the quick and easy solutions but I had the time to go back and watch today.

spoonidentity said:

I rewatched every 1st team running play trying to look for tells. I really couldn't identify anything. In the pistol formation CJ does signal behind his back. The very first running play he actually had the signals held in the small of his lower back when he rotated around and said something to james. In theory the defense could see what he was holding but I think the fact that he made a signal at all is the closest thing to a tell. They really only had one more pistol run throughout the first half where he also made a hand signal. Most of the other runs were out of shotgun with either the running back left or right.

You can see Denbrock starting to do some more creative things with tight ends moving in and then making it a passing play. There were a few of the fake screen formations that went for passes, notably the Micah Gilbert catch and run.

Going back, the biggest issue actually is offensive line blocking. There were a bunch of reps that Knapp didn't look good. When we have our linemen pulling they run very very poorly in general out of those types of plays. Ashton Craig also is blocking quite poorly at the center position so I wonder if coming back from injury is still causing him some issues. I know I'm not the first one to think that. A lot of plays were blown up because blocks weren't held. There was one outside run by Williams that was well blocked by the line but Michael Gilbert look completely disinterested and blocking and the cornerback made the tackle. Could have gone for 10 yards easily if not for that.

Combination of some poor individual efforts and poor blocking, but this also applies to the wide receivers. We really did not do well running pin and pull schemes. I thought when they ran power and Duo it was a lot easier. We also run into a lot of really tight boxes where the linebackers are sitting four yards off online of scrimmage and come screaming in. There were multiple plays where linebackers were at or beyond the line of scrimmage already when the handoff was taking place out of shotgun.

Not that I have the quick and easy solutions but I had the time to go back and watch today.

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This is my sense right now too. And it isn't one guy really. But collectively we have at least one poor rep on a high number of running snaps. I actually find this encouraging as I believe they will grow in their consistency. But obviously, sooner would be better.