October 2, 2006
Purdue @ ND Wrap-Up
Well, this past week I went 5-0 against the spread and 5-0 straight up in my picks. The Purdue line was 14 points and they lost by 14, so that was a no-decision. So that makes me 13-12 against the spread for the year, and 20-6 straight up. Obviously there weren’t too many surprises this past week, except, of course, for Michigan State. I knew they’d derailed, but to lose to ILLINOIS?! Yikes!
But time to move on. Purdue showed the world quite a bit on Saturday; some good, some bad. I realize we lost by 14, but after watching the team play, I’m somehow okay with that. I think they could have made it closer, or even won, but the team is young, and made young-team mistakes. There were a few questionable coaching decisions, and a few questionable calls by the officials, but overall, it was just a Purdue team that executed 95% against an experienced Notre Dame team that executed 100%.
Senor Pez says the better team won on Saturday, which I’ll agree with. He went a bit farther to say that Purdue got embarrassed. I don’t agree.
Purdue has one major flaw that I saw, and that was our defensive gameplan. Earlier this year, ND has watched as Brady Quinn was rattled under pressure when Georgia Tech, Michigan, and Michigan State blitzed him mercilessly. All three of those were either close wins for Notre Dame, or getting blown out by Michigan. Penn State didn’t blitz much, and they got blown out by Notre Dame. I really think Brock Spack (our D coordinator) was trying to help out our weak secondary, by dropping LB’s into coverage and only rushing 4 most of the game. Bad move. Quinn, with time to throw, burned us completing greater than 75% of his passes for 300+ yards and 2 TD’s. I think if we had blitzed, we may have gotten burned for similar stats, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see us get an interception as well, and by bottling up and blitzing, might have done better against the run. In fact, the few plays we blitzed, I think we saw results, and yet I don’t know why we didn’t do it more often.
That being said, though, I don’t think we played that badly. I don’t think we got dominated in this game (as the offensive totals, us putting up 490 yards, would signify). Although 14 points look pretty bad, I don’t think there was really a point where I thought the game was out of reach. It really comes down to two factors. Offensive explosiveness, and the team quitting. We have enough offensive firepower to score on any team from anywhere on the field on any play (see Selwyn Lymon’s 88-yard TD). And we didn’t quit. I don’t think there was a time I saw this team lay down in the second half, even when we were down by three scores. In fact, down 14 with a few minutes left in the 4th and the ball, I still thought we could mount a comeback. Yeah, it was unlikely, as we’d have to score, get an onside kick, and score again to force OT. But this team showed they could rack up yards on ND, and I knew those players were still fighting for a win, despite being down 14 points with time winding down.
So why did this team lose? Well, before the game, I boiled it down to a couple of factors. This is what I said last week:
I think two metrics are going to define this game. Third down conversions and turnovers. Personally, I don’t even think big plays are going to be a big metric, because both offenses will have them. The key is going to be the crucial stops. If Purdue converts well (> 65%) on third down and wins the turnover battle, I think we can take this game. If we don’t, we will get beat.
We lost a fumble, so we lost the TO battle. I can’t even fault the TE, Dustin Keller, on that fumble, because the defender got his helmet right on the ball, which is nearly impossible to defend against. And we were 4 of 11 on third downs (0 for 3 on fourth down), definitely lower than the 65% I think we really needed to be near. Notre Dame, though, was 8 of 14 on third down, and 2 of 2 on fourth down. Purdue helped them with some crucial penalties to keep Notre Dame drives alive, again some young team mistakes. That, and one special team’s score gave ND four points (7 on a TD instead of 3 on a FG).
When it comes down to it, there was no defining point at which Notre Dame “beat” us. It came down to small mistakes, which all add up. We missed an early field goal. Dustin Keller fumbled. Starting the second half, Greg Orton dropped an easy 3rd down pass. Later, Dorien Bryant had a pass bounce right off his pads. We had a strange third-down trick play that didn’t work. We missed the fourth-down conversions. And that’s not even counting the 2nd late hit penalty (which wasn’t late) and the running-into-the-kicker penalty that was a pathetic call. We died the death of a thousand paper cuts, but that’s how a young team learns.
Above all, Coach Tiller said it best after the game. Above all, we made a few small mistakes, but against a quality opponent, that’s all it takes to turn an equal performance into a 14-point loss.
“The thing I think our team needs to learn about our team is that the better the opponent, the smaller the margin of error,” Purdue coach Joe Tiller said Sunday.
“You can make mistakes against a lesser opponent and recover. When the talent of competition picks up, the smallest of errors can be the difference. I hope they learned how critical focus is, and their ability to stay on task for 60 minutes.”
I was happy, though, to see how the team responded. Curtis Painter was so cool he made absolute zero look balmy. Notre Dame never sacked him, but pressured him quite a bit and laid a few hits on him. Yet Painter remained cool, in the face of 80,000 screaming fans, on the road. That was a very good sign, especially for a sophomore. Anthony Spencer looked like an absolute monster. With almost no help from the linebackers on blitzes, he racked up 15 tackes, 4.5 TFL, 1.5 sacks, and broke up 1 pass. Selwyn Lymon had a breakout game, and proved to every defensive coordinator in the Big Ten that if you try to beat Purdue by shutting down Dorien Bryant, we’ve got enough other receivers to burn you with.
And, lest I forget about this point, let me say it one more time. The team never quit. Last year, our problem was a team that quit when they were down. No longer. One of the things I remember about the Drew Brees days was that the team (and us fans) always believed we were still in a game. It didn’t matter how far we were down, we knew that we were a play or two away from coming back into it. That’s the team I saw on Saturday. It didn’t happen for us, but I could tell those players believed it could.
That attitude will make the difference all the rest of this year. We have a couple games on our schedule that might come down to shootouts. We’ll undoubtedly lose some of those games. But this team won’t give up, and I think we’ll win a couple as well.
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