Keys To Victory For The Notre Dame Defense vs. Purdue
Notre Dame is looking to get its defense on track against an offense that is arguably the best it has faced up to this point in the season. The Irish will have to be at their best to slow down the Boilermaker offense and get itself going for the rest of the season.
Here are the keys to victory for the Notre Dame defense.
1. Make Purdue one dimensional - The run game is absolutely not the primary aspect of the Purdue offense. They are clearly a passing team, but Purdue will try to use the ground game to keep the Notre Dame defense honest. Notre Dame must dominate at the line of scrimmage, and the first area where it must thrive is the run game. The Irish have given up long runs that led to scores in each of its first two games, something it cannot allow Purdue to do.
Making Purdue one dimensional means being able to shut down Purdue with the front four defenders and the run side linebackers. It means negatives and stuffs on early down, which puts the Boilermakers in third-and-medium to long situations. That is when the defensive line can pin its ears back and attack the Purdue quarterback.
There's a reason Purdue is 5-17 under head coach Jeff Brohm when it rushes for under 100 yards.
2. Don't let Jack Plummer get comfortable - Part of dominating at the point of attack, as I just mentioned, is attacking the quarterback. Quarterback Jack Plummer is completing 73.8% of his passes this season and 72.1% of his passes in his last six starts. If he gets comfortable in this game he'll thrive in the quick game, move the chains and if he has time to throw he'll hit a couple of deeper shots.
It's the short to intermediate game where Plummer thrives, and once he gets rolling in those areas the offense is hard to defend. If Notre Dame can pressure Plummer and have coverages that force him to keep the ball in his hands longer it will make it much harder for the Purdue offense to move the ball enough to score.
3. Keep David Bell from going off - Wide receiver David Bell is really the only player that could make enough consistently big plays to lead Purdue to an upset. Brohm also loves to move him around, which makes game planning and calling a defense around stopping him a challenge, but that's the challenge in front of Marcus Freeman on Saturday.
The Irish defensive coordinator needs to have a Bell plan that is designed to keep him from taking the game over. Bell will make his fair share of catches in this game, but Notre Dame needs to keep him from making big plays and it needs to keep him from being a difference maker on third down.
If Notre Dame can keep him from taking the game over I'm not sure Purdue can score enough to stay in this game.
4. Finish - Notre Dame held a 38-20 lead over Florida State in the opener and a 24-16 lead over Toledo in game two. In both games the defense had a chance to make stops to put the game away and it failed both times. That must change against Purdue.
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