Irish are Improving, but Still not Enough

30th Sep 2007

Purdue 33
Notre Dame 19

Notre Dame managed to keep a game close for the first time this season. Notre Dame’s offense actually produced more yards than their opponent. Of the 426 total offensive yards, 377 of them were passing yards. Jimmy Clausen played very well, with the exclusion of an inexperienced interception, and threw his first career TD to John Carlson early in the third quarter. Clausen would play a few more plays until he was replaced by Evan Sharpley due to an injury. The severity of this injury is not yet known, but it didn’t appear to be too bad. I expect Jimmy to be playing next week. Sharpley also played very well, but also threw an interception. He managed to throw two touchdowns to true freshmen, Duval Kamara and Golden Tate. Golden Tate made two fantastic catches to score and convert of fourth down. Down by seven in the fourth quarter, the Irish couldn’t stop Purdue and gave up another touchdown to put the game away. Notre Dame’s defense once again gave up over 30 points, 23 of them coming in the first half, but forced a couple key turnovers.

The running game did very little throughout the entire game, after success last week with James Aldridge. He did not get the ball nearly enough, and the Irish only had 26 rushing attempts on the game accumulating for 49 of the 426 yards. Armando Allen got the ball a few times and also could not get anything special on his attempts. Other factors in the game were the amount of penalties committed by Notre Dame. Purdue was given many automatic first downs on stupid mistakes by the players, on 11 penalties for 110 yards. The offensive line only gave up two sacks on the day, but for 22 yards. Charlie Weis went for it on fourth down six times, and converted four of them. Robert Hughes failed two times when the Irish should’ve just used the quarterback sneak.

Jimmy Clausen should start next week if he is completely healthy, even though Sharpley did well when he was in. Clausen was playing extremely well and throwing accurate passes up to his injury. One last note, the Irish rush defense needs to improve greatly after allowing another opposing running back to rush for over 100 yards.

Notre Dame has moved to 0-5 and will face an experienced UCLA team, looking for revenge after the last minute win last year. Go Irish!