Notre Dame didn’t need long to make the point Saturday: the Fighting Irish defense is the side of the ball nobody else should want to see on the schedule.
Yes, Aneyas Williams ripped off Notre Dame’s first run of 20 yards or more this season. Yes, CJ Carr kept carving up Purdue’s defense. But the most alarming development for the rest of the country came when Chris Ash’s unit started swallowing drives whole.
Purdue arrived averaging 39.3 yards per game, and that number wasn’t built on soft competition alone. Both Wake Forest and UCLA were described as legitimate bowl contenders. None of that mattered in the first half, when Barry Odom’s team couldn’t score, couldn’t get comfortable and barely even sniffed the red zone.
Notre Dame set the tone immediately. On the first defensive snap of the game, Bryce Young got to the quarterback for a sack.
Young wasn’t done there. He added another sack later in the half, then forced a fumble that Drayk Bowen scooped up and returned 15 yards for Notre Dame’s third defensive touchdown of the season.
Young may have been the headline act, but the larger story was how many Irish defenders got involved. True freshman Joey O’Brien joined the fun with his first collegiate sack on a safety blitz that blew up a Purdue drive.
By halftime, Purdue had already been sacked four times, and Ryan Browne was spending most of the afternoon trying to get rid of the ball before the pressure arrived. Browne entered Saturday averaging nearly 300 passing yards per game, but he managed only 78 in the first half.
The ground game didn’t help matters either. Purdue had just 12 yards on 18 carries, a miserable 0.7 yards per rush.
That kind of performance stands out even against a Notre Dame defense that had already looked strong through its first three games. The Irish came into Week 4 as one of the best defensive units in the country, and they had allowed only two touchdowns across the first 3.5 games of the season. Against Purdue, they turned that reputation into a first-half shutout.
CJ Carr and the offense are plenty dangerous. But if the rest of the nation is looking for the truly scary part of Notre Dame, it’s Chris Ash’s defense that should have everyone else paying attention.
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Notre Dame took care of Purdue in convincing fashion, racing to a 35-0 halftime lead and turning what could have been a tricky in-state matchup into a comfortable blowout. CJ Carr did his part with three touchdown passes, and the offense had the kind of depth that showed up in the second half as well, with Noah Grubbs and Matt Jeffery each throwing their first career touchdown passes.
Still, the clean final score did not hide every issue for the Irish. The running game never really got rolling, and Carr had enough accuracy hiccups to leave a little room for concern even in a game that was never in doubt. For a team that wants to keep building momentum, those are the kinds of details that tend to matter once the competition gets sharper. [Read more 🡒]
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It will be the 90th meeting between the schools, a reminder that this isnt just another nonconference date on the calendar. Paul Burmeister and Yogi Roth will be on the call, and for Notre Dame, the trip offers another measuring stick in a season where every ranked test can shape the bigger picture. [Read more 🡒]