Last week in this series, the famous Tate leap into the Michigan State band was documented as the Irish downed the Spartans. This week, Notre Dame traveled to West Lafayette to take on a team preparing for their Super Bowl.

Hope Springs Eternal?

2008 was a horrid season for Purdue, as the team went 4-8 with six losses by two-scores or more. One of these was Notre Dame’s 38-21 victory over the Boilers in South Bend. Joe Tiller retired after the year and Purdue elevated Danny Hope, his chosen successor to the head job. Hope was a successful coach at Eastern Kentucky and kept Tiller’s tradition of having a disciplined mustache. Despite evident improvement, the Boilers still lost close games to Oregon and Northern Illinois to begin 2009.

The 1-2 Boilers pulled out all the stops against the Irish, declaring a “Blackout” in Ross-Ade Stadium and repainting the endzones black. The oddsmakers were catching on that this ND team wasn’t going to be as dominant as originally thought and installed the Irish as six-point favorites. On top of Michael Floyd’s broken collarbone and Jimmy Clausen’s turf toe, Armando Allen would miss the game due to injury despite a good start to the year. Against a banged-up Irish offense and anemic defense, the Boilermakers seemed primed to pull off an upset in only the sixth night game in Purdue history.

Game Highlights

*If you would like to watch the game in its entirety, click here. If you want DownInTheBend’s condensed games from the 2009 season, you can find those here.

Some Thoughts

  • This game was incredibly boring from the end of the second quarter to the beginning of the fourth. Then all hell broke loose with the Irish defense suddenly collapsing and the Boilermakers retaking the lead with under four minutes left. Hobbled Jimmy Clausen then led the game-winning drive to avoid an atrocious loss.
  • Without Floyd, Kyle Rudolph was the savior for the Irish in this game. Two of his four catches came on the final drive, one going for 20 yards and the other for the game winner. It’s hard to fathom that even the third pass catcher on this team would turn into an NFL Pro Bowler.
  • Charlie Weis showed off some wrinkles in the Wildcat by having Golden Tate run the ball in the second quarter. The offense then promptly went into a shell up 17-7 before rallying on the final drive. Without Armando Allen, Robert Hughes was the main ball-carrier with 15 carries and did some hard running for 68 yards.
  • A Dayne Crist sighting! I’m not sure what Weis’ plan was for this game, but Crist split snaps with Clausen and actually looked pretty decent while playing real minutes. On the other hand, Clausen was clearly affected by his foot and looked poor outside of the last drive. This is when we all started making “Dayne Christ” jokes.
  • One play that stood out to me was Darrin Walls’ diving interception of Joey Elliot when Purdue was going for it on fourth and one (1:48 mark in the highlights). I mean, was that really necessary? It cost the Irish about 20 yards of field position.
  • At 3:34 of the highlights, the Irish were in 3rd and 14 after Clausen was sacked and came up limping. The next play, he lofted a beautiful ball to Robby Parris on the right sideline for a first down. An all-time underrated play from his career at ND.
  • Manti Te’o shot through the gap on Purdue’s last possession to sack Elliot and basically end the game. Yup, sometimes you just know when a player is going to be great.
  • Outside of Purdue’s first drive and the fourth quarter, the Irish defense played pretty well. Unfortunately, it only took two bad drives for the Boilermakers to take the lead due to the extreme conservatism on offense. But after the previous two weeks, this was seen as a step forward for that unit.

The Irish had Hope on their Side

I had completely forgotten about this sequence, but was astonished to rediscover it in re-watching the game. At 2:18:30 of the full game replay, the Irish were in second and goal at the Purdue four-yard line with :42 seconds left. Robert Hughes was stuffed on a run play and Clausen tried to get the offense back to the line of scrimmage to spike the ball, only for Danny Hope to call timeout. In an all-time blunder, Hope essentially allowed the Irish one more play for absolutely no reason. Yet, two weeks after Weis not running the ball against Michigan, this inexplicable mistake didn’t even get mentioned in the AP game summary. Strange.

Aside from that, this was a gutsy win by the Irish. Without their leading rusher, leading receiver and a hobbled quarterback, Notre Dame managed to avoid the upset against a pretty decent Purdue team. The touchdown to Rudolph has always been underrated in my eyes, could you imagine if Weis had lost this game? He might not have survived the month.

The Irish defense looked mostly okay for the first time since the Nevada game which was a plus, but still let the Boilermakers mount their comeback in the final quarter. However, the major concern was suddenly ND’s offense of all-pros which was losing star players faster than it could replace them. And with a Washington team led by Jake Locker coming into South Bend next week, the Irish would need all the help they could get…

Other Things that Happened that Week

  • #14 Cincinnati beat Fresno State to move to 4-0 on the season. Again, putting this here for no reason whatsoever.
  • This week featured two upsets of top ten teams by unranked teams. #5 Penn State was beaten 21-10 at home by Iowa, and #6 Cal was vaporized by Oregon 42-3.
  • #22 Michigan barely survived an Indiana team that would end 4-8. Yet Tate Forcier’s September Heisman campaign rolled on to East Lansing. Interesting aside: IU’s offensive coordinator in this game was Matt Canada.
  • A week after beating Georgia Tech and declaring that the U was back once again, #9 Miami was demolished by #11 Virginia Tech 31-7.
  • Tim Tebow was infamously decleated against Kentucky which sparked a national outpouring of grief and whatnot.