Five things we learned: Notre Dame 31, Purdue 24 | Inside the Irish
by Keith Arnold
1. With no true pass rush to speak of, the Irish need to find a way to get off the field on third down.
2. For much of the first half, the Irish were their own worst enemy on offense, refusing to stretch the field.
3. While using a lot of personnel is a good thing, being predictable certainly isn’t.
4. A year after doing all of the little things right, the Irish’s growing pains on defense are quite obvious.
5. A season after riding ugly victories all the way to the NC game, give credit to Tommy Rees and the Irish for getting out of West Lafayette alive.
I take a different approach to it. Purdue's playcalling to me showed an offensive coordinator who didn't want any part of trying to run the ball at Notre Dame. They were constantly rolling out, using one-step drops, resorting to screens. It was clear to me that they respect the hell out of Notre Dame's defense.
That said, Russell hasn't been good. He's been average. This shouldn't be a shocker. He was a RB recruit and is very much a project at CB. It explains the talk of him losing his starting spot in the preseason to Wood. Unfortunately Wood isn't up to the task so we're seeing Luke get playing time. It wouldn't surprise me if Luke's playing time eventually unseated Russell.
Everyone talks about DL depth being an issue, I don't agree with those concerns. My concerns are at DB. Notre Dame has an A+ coaching staff and Russell will get better, and replacing him with a true freshmen isn't an enviable position for Diaco. It's just a weakness, simple as that.
I think we can expect to see teams for the remainder of the season do exactly what Michigan and Purdue have done, move the pocket, get away from Notre Dame's pass rush (which I think is fine), and get those ILBs in space. Teams don't want to play to Notre Dame's advantages, so because of that we should probably stop freaking out about some let down that in my opinion is simply overstated.
Now I'll say this about the ILBs, they aren't designed to be all-world coverage linebackers, that's just not going to ever happen. But the same advantage that Notre Dame has (being built to stop running teams) is their weakness in pass coverage. You take the ILBs out and play a nickel, you're not longer superior in the box. You leave them in, teams roll away from them and play towards the sidelines.
That's just what I've seen defensively. Once Notre Dame gets the hang of covering the backs sneaking out of the backfield, they'll be dynamite again. Purdue, as one would expect, tried to go back to that well too many times and Diaco didn't let it happen in the second half.
Offensively, Martin needs to get his head out of his *** and go vertical. Coaching is what made this game a tale of two halves (3-10/28-14). This is two games in a row where I've thought the play calling was suspiciously bad in the first half. This isn't a team that's going to line up and run the ball right at you; stop trying to do it. Rees is capable of putting this team on his shoulders, the talent advantage with Jones/Daniels is simply better than having Koyack struggle trying to block a DE.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Kelly on Stephon Tuitt, "This is probably his best game of the year in terms of just being on every play." Tuitt had one tackle.</p>— Irish Illustrated (@NDatRivals) <a href="https://twitter.com/NDatRivals/statuses/379305053082767360">September 15, 2013</a></blockquote>
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I saw a Purdue team that generally stayed away from him, and that would explain a lot. They ran at Day, who is a stud and answered the call, but not at Tuitt from what I saw.
Just for comparison, all-world Jadeveon Clowney has two sacks in three games. Teams aren't stupid, you gameplan to take players out of the game.
What pass rush are we expecting when opponents are rolling the pocket or having one-step drops? Every time Purdue called a conventional pass play the pocket imploded and their quarterback was hit.
