Post Game Observations........

[Old Man Mike]

Purdue: 15 starters returning. 3 of 4 D-Linemen and 7 of their top 8 D-Linemen. Also returning quality punter. Beat Ohio State in second to last game last season. Won their bowl game [Western Michigan, but "we" {my old school} had one of the nation's better quarterbacks]. Now one season older, more savvy, more confident.

Coach Hope sees that if not loaded against, Notre Dame will run your brains out, so he says: we will load against them. That young QB will have to do everything himself, and odds are he won't be able to. If we score a little, we'll win. Coach Kelly says: Coach Hope is too smart to let us run much, especially with all those linemen and linebackers. We're going to have to throw it. Kelly and Everett come out winging it from the first play.

Everett holds up. Just absolutely superb. Huge pressure on him in every way. Purdue has a great game plan, as their corners can really cover, but we move the ball enough and never trail. Everett manages the game. Kelly smiles. We're growing as we watch against a dammed good defense --- one with probably three D-Linemen who will play in the NFL..

Near the end of the game: adversity. Everett wears down. Gets a little ding. In comes the toughest sonofab!tch on the team. He leads us to one last winning score.

Our VERY young team stood up and took a huge set of haymakers and struggled through. Diaco again kept us in it, and Everett, Tommy, and Kelly found a way. Coach said that he was very proud of them. So am I.

 

[irishfan1122]

For those who are complaining, I give you this...

Be happy ND won, and you aren't a fan of: Arkansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Wisconsin.

Did ND play great? No. Did they win? Yes.

It's as if no one remembers 2007 or 2008. Hell, does anyone remember USF last year? Good grief people!

 

[irishff1014]

I am very proud of the Team they didn't give up which is a great sign. The offense though will the play calling makes us look bad. We wasted 3 timeouts due to miscommunication. And then when you come back from a time you look just as lost as you were before the time out i don't like that. I have said i support coach kelly and don't want to see him fired but this game wasn't a good game for him.

 

[deise mike]

Looking at Purdue's schedule. They have Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio State in 3 consecutive weeks. That will be some test of how good they are. If they can win one of those I'll be impressed.

I thought they looked pretty solid on both sides of the ball. I think letting 10 points slip away in the 4th quater put a bit of a dampener on a hard fought but not very inspiring performance.

I was really pleased with Golson's performance. Having seen him in Dublin I did not get the impression he could carry the team if the run didn't work. His performance and figures prove that he can.

 

[arrowryan]

You have to give credit to Purdue, there is no question about it. That is much improved, and I'm starting to agree with the people that said Purdue could win the B1G.

Everett Golson played an excellent game, he showed why he is without a doubt the best quarterback on this team.

The defense played good. This was going to be a test for our secondary and I think they passed the test.

The front 7 played like they usually do. Stephon Tuitt is an absolute monster and I think he will be an All-American next year. Also, Nix played a great game with 2 sacks.

I'm starting to love Davaris Daniels and how he has come onto the scene. He will be a special player at ND.

The running game was not good but it will be better the rest of the season with Cierre being back.

Overall, I would give Notre Dame's performance a "B". He played good but we could've played better.

For the MSU game, I hope they stack the box with 8 guys. Golson will beat it all day. Look for Niklas to have a really good game

 

[ulukinatme]

Guys that are complaining about the running game need to chill. We ran 36 times for 50ish yards. Yeah, horrible stat, but Purdue was setup to shut down the run. They wanted to force Golson to pass, and he did a pretty good job yesterday. Take comfort in the fact that we can beat people through the air if we can't beat them on the ground, some teams can only do one or the other.

 

[pkt77242]

Since I haven't posted my thoughts here we go

The Good:
Golson looked good for the first 3 quarters.
Tuitt and Nix
Motta played pretty well and provided great leadership in the secondary
Slaughter played well
DD played well
Rees
KLM and Day before getting injured
Shumate played solid again.

The inconsistent
Brindza and Turk
KR and B-Jax alternated good plays with rough plays
I hate to say it but Teo.

The bad
Shembo didn't get much pressure and wasn't very good against the run
Farley did not look good, some issue in coverage and with tackling
Punt return blocking

The ugly
all the stupid penalties
The O-Line, Golic was the biggest problem but they all struggled with penalties and/or missed assignments
Will linebacker- Both looked bad. Can we get Grace or Moore out there please.
Jalen Brown's tackling skills.
Burning all of our timeouts early.

I will take the win and be happy with it but there is a lot to work on this week.

 

[polishjuice4]

Serious?????? I like EG but I think you've got a future as his hype man.

I think and I hope he meant Notre Dame history.

 

[domerfreak]

This is how teams learn to win sports fans. All this team did last year was turnovers and loose in the fourth quarter. Does anybody remember the bowl game? Before the season even started everyone said this was a trap game. There would be jet lag effects, busy first two weeks, or the team would sleep walk and truthfully I think all were present to some degree. My point is no way we win an injury plagued nail bitter game like this in the recent past.
I really wasn’t too surprised to see TR enter with zero TO’s, tie ball game, and no TE for EG to count on. It made sense and honestly my heart rate elevated, but like it or not TR marched right down the field and secured a solid win.
The sky isn’t falling, BK is still the coach, and now let’s go get sparty!

 

[Domer4ever]

I am happy the team won and I acknowledge that Purdue is better than most thought, but these were some of the problems I observed:

- The fact that this team has yet to establish an offensive identity heading into year 3 under Kelly is troubling. I thought we had finally started going in that direction last week employing a Stanford type power offense that employed multiple TE's, a strong running game, and efficient QB play. We saw none of that this week against Purdue and instead adjusted the offense to try and counteract what they (Purdue) did well instead of the other way around. It was like watching two completely different offenses from Navy to Purdue. I do not understand changing an offense week in and week out to try and out think/out scheme opposing defenses. To me it's a big reason why this team has yet to establish an offensive identity. Somehow, I could not see Jim Harbaugh while he was at Stanford changing what they did well in an effort to try and "fool" an opposing defense.

- Along the lines of what I mentioned above, Kelly consistently changing the play to counter what the defensive is showing is just not working. It's taking too long and the team is having to burn a lot of valuable time out's because the play is not being relayed in fast enough. Again, year 3 of the offense and this is still a problem. Stop trying to be tricky and just run the play!!

- GAIII better have been hurt, otherwise him only getting 1 carry is inexcusable considering he's the most explosive player on the roster. He should be getting a minimum of 10 touches a game.

- Can we please scrap the 3-4 already? This team get's burned every time it goes with a 3 man front and is much stouter and gets more pressure with a traditional 4 man line. More defensive lineman and less Calabrese and Fox please!!! The defensive line is the strength of this defense, not the linebacker core.

 

[peoriairish]

Fun stat of the day. ND is 4th in the nation at 3rd down conversions at 62.1%. That number jumps to 69.6% with Everett in the game. Put that in your Fruit Loops and eat it.

 

[tommyIRISH23]

I am happy the team won and I acknowledge that Purdue is better than most thought, but these were some of the problems I observed:

- The fact that this team has yet to establish an offensive identity heading into year 3 under Kelly is troubling. I thought we had finally started going in that direction last week employing a Stanford type power offense that employed multiple TE's, a strong running game, and efficient QB play. We saw none of that this week against Purdue and instead adjusted the offense to try and counteract what they (Purdue) did well instead of the other way around. It was like watching two completely different offenses from Navy to Purdue. I do not understand changing an offense week in and week out to try and out think/out scheme opposing defenses. To me it's a big reason why this team has yet to establish an offensive identity. Somehow, I could not see Jim Harbaugh while he was at Stanford changing what they did well in an effort to try and "fool" an opposing defense.

- Along the lines of what I mentioned above, Kelly consistently changing the play to counter what the defensive is showing is just not working. It's taking too long and the team is having to burn a lot of valuable time out's because the play is not being relayed in fast enough. Again, year 3 of the offense and this is still a problem. Stop trying to be tricky and just run the play!!

- GAIII better have been hurt, otherwise him only getting 1 carry is inexcusable considering he's the most explosive player on the roster. He should be getting a minimum of 10 touches a game.

- Can we please scrap the 3-4 already? This team get's burned every time it goes with a 3 man front and is much stouter and gets more pressure with a traditional 4 man line. More defensive lineman and less Calabrese and Fox please!!! The defensive line is the strength of this defense, not the linebacker core.

You can find explanations and rebuttles to everything you wrote in the previous 15-20 pages. Dont worry, each rebuttle was written about 7 times bc people keep posting the same "problems".

 

[johnnykillz]

Cierre being back this week will be huge.

I concur!

 

[ND_HAS_RISEN]

Big props to Rees. I was baffled when I saw him warming up and I really did feel like BK just gave up on EG, but Rees absolutely made the right decision on EVERY throw. The third down that "should" have been called for delay appeared at first to be complete desperation, but it was exactly the right throw. If Rees had EG's skill we'd have a big time player. Luckily we have EG and Rees there to help coach...

Carlo Calabrese and Fox are terrible in pass coverage.

Tuitt, Nix, and KLM (hopefully he's fine, i haven't heard) are fantastic! Tuitt has the potential to maybe be the best DL i've seen at ND during my life.

Motta and Slaughter are the only two DB's that can tackle. WR's like Woods and Lee @ USC will destroy this secondary if they do not learn how to tackle.

I think DD could be pretty special. I think his confidence will continue to grow as he gets more PT

Troy Niklas is a behemoth and might be my favorite player this year.

2-0 going into a tough stretch. As many others have said, this is a game that ND loses in the past few years and they won, in regulation nevertheless.

 

[rtrn2glory]

take what i say with a grain of salt, b/c i didn't get to see the second half. had a makeup high school game sat. night with the weather.

all i'm gonna say is that we need to be more creative offensively. EG is never going to be able to throw the ball all over the field imo and we need to use his strengths to our advantage. need to find ways to outflank the defense and hopefully with cierre back next week that'll be more of a possibility

we are going to see a very hostile environment next sat. night. we need to win one of the two next games we have.

with that said, feels good to be 2-0 and when it's all said and done the bottom line is just win baby

p.s. defense is going to need to carry us next two weeks.

 

[woolybug25]

all i'm gonna say is that we need to be more creative offensively. EG is never going to be able to throw the ball all over the field imo and we need to use his strengths to our advantage. need to find ways to outflank the defense and hopefully with cierre back next week that'll be more of a possibility

We are going to need to have Golson start getting a better grip on our vanilla offense before we start making it more complicated. If we start adding additional reads, blocking schemes and route trees we are going to see a noticeable spike in mistakes. Golson is very talented and will be able to do a lot of athletic things for us going forward. But he clearly has issues calling plays, coordinating his blocking and staying on the same page with the rest of the offense. He will get better at this, but I don't think making our offense more complicated is going to help him get more comfortable.

I truly believe that we need to keep it simple and allow Golson to use his athletic ability in high percentage situations. He will get better at calling the plays, but he obviously has a lot of work to do in this department.

 

[ARALOU]

I remember about twenty years ago. (not sure exactly how long) The Irish were man handled by an unknown Northwestern team coached by Gary Barnett. The sky was falling then too. Northwestern wound up winning the big ten and be highly ranked. My point is, Purdue has a better than average defense with an All American d-tackle. Their offense is solid. IRISH beat them. Which is more than OSU did at the end of last year. Wait until you see if Purdue is a legit team before you condemn this victory. I happen to think they are. They certainly are not a D-2 or Non BCS conference team.

 

[jcun]

I know "what could have been" doesn't really matter... but on the first drive there was a completion that should have been for a first down (with forward progress) that was marked short... so we had 3rd and 1 instead of first down.

We followed that with a false start, so we are 3rd and 6 instead of 1st and 15. We were moving the ball... could have put up 6 there.

Second drive, EG missed over the middle (Niklas?) on what would have been a sure touchdown. We are looking at 14-0. IMO, different ballgame from that point forward.

What was really great was the fact that though things really didn't go our way (other than the review on EG's rushing TD and the no call on Tommy's delay of game)... and we didn't let it affect our attitude. We hung in there and won the game. I agree with the many posters who have already said that, in the past few years, we lose this game.

I'm thrilled we got through it and hope we can do it again next week. Go Irish!

 

[NDTH91]

I know "what could have been" doesn't really matter... but on the first drive there was a completion that should have been for a first down (with forward progress) that was marked short... so we had 3rd and 1 instead of first down.

I just saw this when I was watching the replay. You have to think that changes the outcome of that drive! But like you said, no point in crying over spilled milk.

 

[no.1IrishFan]

Purdue: 15 starters returning. 3 of 4 D-Linemen and 7 of their top 8 D-Linemen. Also returning quality punter. Beat Ohio State in second to last game last season. Won their bowl game [Western Michigan, but "we" {my old school} had one of the nation's better quarterbacks]. Now one season older, more savvy, more confident.

Coach Hope sees that if not loaded against, Notre Dame will run your brains out, so he says: we will load against them. That young QB will have to do everything himself, and odds are he won't be able to. If we score a little, we'll win. Coach Kelly says: Coach Hope is too smart to let us run much, especially with all those linemen and linebackers. We're going to have to throw it. Kelly and Everett come out winging it from the first play.

Everett holds up. Just absolutely superb. Huge pressure on him in every way. Purdue has a great game plan, as their corners can really cover, but we move the ball enough and never trail. Everett manages the game. Kelly smiles. We're growing as we watch against a dammed good defense --- one with probably three D-Linemen who will play in the NFL..

Near the end of the game: adversity. Everett wears down. Gets a little ding. In comes the toughest sonofab!tch on the team. He leads us to one last winning score.

Our VERY young team stood up and took a huge set of haymakers and struggled through. Diaco again kept us in it, and Everett, Tommy, and Kelly found a way. Coach said that he was very proud of them. So am I.

You, sir, are 100% correct.

 

[Old Man Mike]

A small additional thought: I read a bit of post-game Purdue fan commentary. Much of it is severe homerism as you'd expect. Some things leaked through though. They consider our front seven to be perhaps the best they'll see all year, minus maybe OSU. They consider Eifert unstoppable, and ND receivers generally very big and physical. They were pleasantly surprised to see that their defense is even better than they thought it was, and they already thought it was very good. They said if the defense plays this well against "Other really good teams", they are optimistic about all the remaining games, again with a possible OSU exception.

They at least think we're pretty good.

 

[arndtjc]

Serious?????? I like EG but I think you've got a future as his hype man.

I meant I haven't seen it from a ND QB in my lifetime...

 

[kmoose]

I meant I haven't seen it from a ND QB in my lifetime...

How old are you?

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mdLeoigKkcI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[In Lou I Trust]

I meant I haven't seen it from a ND QB in my lifetime...

Carlyle Holiday ring a bell?

 

[arndtjc]

Well, touche.

I guess I got a little excited seeing him in person. I do remember Holiday, but I still think EG will be a lot more special than him.

 

[stlnd01]

I remember about twenty years ago. (not sure exactly how long) The Irish were man handled by an unknown Northwestern team coached by Gary Barnett. The sky was falling then too. Northwestern wound up winning the big ten and be highly ranked. My point is, Purdue has a better than average defense with an All American d-tackle. Their offense is solid. IRISH beat them. Which is more than OSU did at the end of last year. Wait until you see if Purdue is a legit team before you condemn this victory. I happen to think they are. They certainly are not a D-2 or Non BCS conference team.

I agree. I think this may prove to be one of those wins that will look better in retrospect, a little like MSU last year. Not because it's the highlight of a disappointing season but because the team we beat is playing for the Big Ten title.

 

[North Buffalo Irish]

I know "what could have been" doesn't really matter... but on the first drive there was a completion that should have been for a first down (with forward progress) that was marked short... so we had 3rd and 1 instead of first down.

We followed that with a false start, so we are 3rd and 6 instead of 1st and 15. We were moving the ball... could have put up 6 there.

Just wanted to clear up the bolded part. We were actually called for an illegal shift (two men in motion). Riddick got the first down on the play. The replay clearly showed that Eifert was the only player in motion. It was a blown call.

EDIT: Jarious Jackson, Arnaz Battle, Carlyle Holliday

 

[irishtrain]

Smiling and happy to say I was wrong on a 1-1 start. Golson was the best young QB I've seen here in sometime. I'd rate Purdue about # 50 in the country even though they have improved the athletes and have a really nice d line. I dont think Notre Dame beats either mich school but right now I'm loving being wrong about the start. I bring my Irish in at about #30. You might keep an eye on Purdue down the road this year-they may do some damage which would make this win look a little better.