Rakes Report #298: Traveling north to find you -- train wheels beating, the wind in my eyes (The Purdue Review)

The Irish concluded the first perfect September of Marcus Freeman’s tenure with a clean and complete effort against the Boilermakers.

~optional musical accompaniment~

1) The first true road game of the season has the potential to end up being a little tricky. It helps when you’re playing close enough you can bus to visit a team you know you can score against, but still, you have to go out and execute. Notre Dame scored touchdowns on four straight drives to close the first half, allowed Purdue to barely get past the 50 before the break and didn’t get flagged for a penalty until the two-minute warning at the end of the game.

We don’t want to overstate how good the Purdue offense is but they were a moderately respectable 51st in F+ coming into this game, gave Chris Ash all kinds of trouble for a half a year ago and were facing an Irish team down two of its top three safeties. Elite performance by a group that’s lived up to every bit of the high expectations we had for them coming into the season. We’ve still got questions about the offense but the first third of the season has answered the query of “Is this a championship-caliber defense?” with a response of “Yeah obviously no duh.”

The 14th straight win by double digits is tied for the seventh longest such streak in history. Let’s go ahead and try to match the record of 21, set by Army in 1944-46. (The 21st century record is 17, by the 2000-01 Miami Hurricanes.) Really impressive work by Marcus Freeman’s squad since Texas A&M.

2) It’s probably a little early to start awards campaigning but I hope Notre Dame puts a full press on for Bryce Young who has been sensational. Stopping the run, pressuring the quarterback, being large and scary, doing pretty much everything you could possibly want. He had a sack on the very first play of the game and then his second was the forced fumble that Drayk Bowen returned to make this a laugher. Already at 5.5 sacks on the season, and that’s with an option team thrown in there. Paired with Boubacar Traore, who’s been a pressure machine, we’ve been blessed with an elite Irish defensive end combo.

Joey O’Brien held up quite nicely in his first career start, for a true freshman or any class. He had the exact same number of snaps as Leonard Moore (probably has a pick early on a better ball, loved seeing Ash move him around so much in the formation -- keep the opposition guessing on where the best in the country is lurking) and Adon Shuler (relatively quiet game even though he led the team in tackles so I guess not really quiet). Remember how the season started with D.J. McKinney and Jayden Sanders in a corner time share? McKinney was only a snap behind the leaders in playing time and blew up a wide receiver screen all by himself.

Bowen laid the wood and scored his first career touchdown. Great Jaylen Sneed game. Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa’s blitzes are absurd, if you’re the opposing offensive coordinator you should definitely try to avoid him being isolated on your center. First career sack for Armel Mukam and another tackle for loss for Francis Brewu who just looks very cool out there being active in No. 7. Some solid snaps from Sean Sevillano, Jr. It hasn’t been an issue yet because Traore and Young have been so good and these games have been lopsided but only 18 snaps from Keon Keeley (two hurries in those snaps, though). Loghan Thomas continues to chip in while Rodney Dunham got a sack and continues to look the part but I’m not sure if “Literally nobody blocked him” translates against first-team offenses.

Couple more defensive things: They have allowed a long rush on the season of 15 yards. They have scored three touchdowns and allowed three, and that includes Purdue scoring with seconds left down 46 points.

3) I was in the process of sending a “Not the best C.J. Carr game” text as he threw the pick so that’s on me I guess. We’re judging on a scale here and overall it was a good day but he was pressing at times in the first half, taking some shots into double coverage (is it a 50/50 ball if you’re competing against two defenders, or is that more like a 40/60 at best?), throwing to a very covered Micah Gilbert to end the first possession, throwing behind Ty Washington and missing high on the end-of-second-quarter touchdown pass to Nolan James Jr. There was still plenty of good: The deep throw to Jordan Faison up the right sideline was gorgeous, plus finding Gilbert again, all the good work at the line, a rushing touchdown (getting some revenge after he got popped on the wildcat snap), and elite red zone efficiency (four trips, four touchdowns) (the Flanaigai both score again). If these are the off days, we’ll take them (11 yards an attempt, 63% completion rate, 93rd percentile in yards per dropback), but still an off day aided by Purdue straight-up not covering guys.

It felt in the early going like Gilbert was going to have another monster stat line but we’ll take his fourth straight good game out of four to start the season, including continued damage working out of the slot. I hope everyone is very excited about what Gilbert is doing even though he doesn’t fit the usual skill player hype profile (typically a big-ticket transfer or younger high-end recruit). Faison great again. Appreciate trying to work Jaden Greathouse into the gameplan as requested here often but I was thinking more trying to scheme him open versus the brute force tactics employed on Saturday. Mylan Graham drew another pass interference flag. Noah Grubbs to Jerome Bettis Jr. was a beaut, as was him finding Matt Jeffery for a score.

What exactly does being RB1 mean? Against Michigan State, Aneyas William got the first possession but James, Jr. got way more carries. Against Purdue, James Jr. got the first possession but Williams got more carries. The underlying numbers still favor James Jr. but Williams looked as good as he has all season, although against a Purdue rush defense that has been bad. I think you could also say if James Jr. really is RB1, you wouldn’t want him taking unnecessary hits in a game this lopsided. (Important to note that Freeman said last week he overreacted to the celebration penalty and said he apologized to Williams for it, which is quite commendable.) Williams set the new season-high for a long run on his touchdown, and then Jonaz Walton — clearly RB3 at this point — had the awesome 44-yarder in garbage time. Overall, the Irish were 80th percentile EPA per rush and the starting offense didn’t allow a tackle for loss. Keep grinding and improving.

4) The decision to go for it on fourth down from the Irish 24 early in the second quarter was ultra aggressive, but I like that there was no hesitation in the call. It was 14-0 and I suspect Freeman had full faith in his defense to mitigate damage if it went awry. Would he do this against a more credible opponent? To be decided, but it was funny against Purdue.

No field goal attempts by Spencer Porath on his return to Ross-Ade Stadium, but clean on all the extra point attempts. Jasper Scaife’s 52-yard punt that pinned Purdue at their own seven was beautiful. The Boilermakers actually put a drive on after it, but that ended on the fake field goal that was so kindly snuffed out by Dunham and Ebenezer Ewetade (so awesome to see two blue-chip freshmen affecting games already). Really nice punt return by Faison to set up the first half’s final touchdown.

Purdue wasn’t exactly stressing the Irish but no penalties during the meaningful portion of the game is no penalties during the meaningful portion of the game. No mental errors, no taunts, no reaching and grabbing by a lineman or defensive back when there was no need. Great stuff.

Speaking of great, I really enjoyed the Peacock booth of Paul Burmeister and Yogi Roth. Helps that they were covering an Irish blowout but it was constant talk about the game (A+ focus on all of Carr’s pre-snap work) and after NBC broadcasts usually have the color commentators view punting as the most noble virtue it was so nice to have Roth have a modern understanding of the game. Near the end of the first half, he noted that Notre Dame had all three timeouts and might try to score quickly and use those timeouts for a second crack all within two minutes. Didn’t happen but the fact he even thought that far ahead was a pleasure.

5) Winning is Hard Round Up: If you’re a Michigan fan, what would possess you to wear a 0:01 shirt to a game? Is it that you know your previous cheating was barely punished and you believe you have infinite impunity to go along with your hubris? Well, not always and not even often but occasionally a higher power steps in and you give up a 91-yard drive to lose to goddamn Iowa at the buzzer. The Hawkeyes’ postgame win expectancy was 7.3%, the lowest for a victor thus far this season via Bill Connelly.

I assume Southern Cal is going to try and get out of playing Oregon after losing to them again at home despite an assassination attempt on Dante Moore. (This is an extremely satisfying read on the state of Lincoln Riley’s program.) Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Jeff Brohm followed up a great win with a bad loss (losing at home as a double-digit favorite to Wake Forest). Penn State had the Wisconsin game in the bag (17-0! Colton Joseph threw three picks) but Matt Campbell got too conservative, blew the lead and then mismanaged the clock on the final drive in a crushing loss to the Badgers. A big question was how was Campbell going to handle some spotlight and the legitimate defense of “Hey man, this is Iowa State, what do you expect?” after disappointments being off the table and now we’ll find out. LSU annihilated Texas A&M and that’s a lot of money for not a lot in College Station. Barring a turnaround, Mike Elko is looking at 0-3 against the Longhorns.

Speaking of, Texas and Tennessee put on some twisted performance art, with Arch Manning throwing it from beyond the line of scrimmage multiple times and Faizon Brandon showing the pocket awareness of a true freshman playing against one of the best pass rushers in the nation (10 sacks taken). Ole Miss followed up their monster win against LSU by getting handled in the Swamp by Florida. (Buster Faulkner is an incredible offensive coordinator.) South Carolina got blown out in Tuscaloosa so badly their star pass rusher Dylan Stewart had a meltdown for which he was suspended indefinitely.

John Mateer had a nightmare game and the Sooners had no chance against Georgia. Kansas State let it slip away at Cincinnati. (Gi’Bran Payne has been really good for the Bearcats, shoutout to him.) West Virginia lost the thread at home against Oklahoma State. Georgia Tech led by 10 in Palo Alto and lost. Washington lost at home to Minnesota in their first game against a Power 4 opponent. SMU had way more trouble with Missouri State than you would have expected. Navy lost at UAB. Miami was trailing Central Michigan 3-0 for a bit but that ended up fine for the Hurricanes. TCU lost an ugly one at Central Florida and Frog fans want Sonny Dykes gone.

We like to use betting lines and win totals as a baseline in some discussions but it’s important to remember Vegas is not always correct, like when they made UCLA a 2.5-point favorite at Maryland and then the Bruins won 54-3. Please watch this pick six the Terps threw. Western Michigan had their biggest home game in years hosting Boise State and lost 32-7. All the preseason good vibes around California were further snuffed out at home by Clemson (the Golden Bears are a Syracuse collapse away from 1-3). Northwestern had Indiana in hell all Friday night long but the Hoosiers prevailed.

6) Almost wrote about this last week but we were running long even before I added unnecessary book excerpts so I’m going to include it now in belated fashion because I found the topic to be so infuriating. It’s not Notre Dame-specific so if you want to skip down to the next section feel free.

I’ve mostly avoided learning about and discussing the Protect College Sports Act because they’re playing actual football now and I’ve had skepticism it would pass (the fact it seems like it will get through the Senate is further than I would have predicted, to be fair, but the chances in the House seem dicey). College GameDay had Ted Cruz on to plug the bill he’s co-sponsored with zero pushback (but plenty of boos from the crowd), which understandably drew a lot of scrutiny.

Speaking to the local Oxford media the Friday before Lane Kiffin’s return, Kirk Herbstreit said the following (emphasis added):

“I don’t really get into politics. I’m kind of an independent guy, right down the middle of the fairway. I’m for America. So whoever helps us as a country, I’m for. Whether that’s somebody on the left, somebody on the right. So I don’t really follow it. I don’t know anything about his political views; I don’t know what he’s for or against.

“I care about football and my family and my faith and my country. Those are things that I love. So I don’t really pick sides. And I was surprised. I didn’t know what his deal was. So him being booed, I had to ask people, ‘What’s going on here?’”

“We had him on because they were going to be voting this week, and maybe he could give us some insight into what’s going on. That was really it. So we’re not picking sides in any way at all; we just want to see the chaos that’s surrounding the sport kind of be reeled in. And if this will help us get to that, then great.”

A game that you have to play far too often these days comes down to attempting to deduce “Is this person stupid, do they think I’m stupid, or a combination of both?” Kirk, we can see who you follow on social media. You’re following the Department of Homeland Security in an apolitical fashion? You just enjoy their cursed memes demonizing minority communities? You’re following Kash Patel, Nancy Mace and Mike Johnson just because?

And there are a number of senators someone could tell me they weren’t familiar with and I’d say, sure, I see that. But Ted Cruz? Ted Cruz?! You’ve posted about him! I’m not sure ESPN and College GameDay have much in the way of credibility left but the entire PCSA discourse has been a disaster. First, you have one of your panelists, Nick Saban, appearing in commercials for it. Then you’re having Rece Davis sit there while Ted Cruz monologues. (Davis’ post-interview comments weren’t great, either.) I don’t need GameDay to do investigative journalism, but if you’re going to talk about a potential federal law that will affect millions with a sitting senator you have to ask real questions or you need to give equal time to an opponent of the bill to monologue on the same show.

ESPN had an actual reporter write a lengthy piece on what is actually in the bill (what exactly are we protecting college football from via the law?) and this is an interesting line from it: “Cruz declined multiple requests for an interview from ESPN for this story.” You don’t say. Then there’s the fact that ESPN’s parent company is among the many large corporations lobbying in favor of the PCSA. The whole thing is a mess.

Waiting a week to write this ended up working out because a few days ago Mother Jones and Pablo Torre Finds Out published an investigation into Life Surge, a very sketchy Christian wealth-seminar. Time to take a big sip of water and look at who was at a Life Surge event last year in Columbus, which occurred right down the middle of the fairway:

7) I didn’t get too deep into the discourse last week but was disappointed to see how gloomy some were after the Sparty win considering the dominance of the second half and overall effort (98.9% postgame win expectancy). We all came into this season with the highest of expectations but viewing every single game entirely through the lens of “Is this good enough to win a national title?!” will drive you insane, especially in September. It’s fun to spend a little time gaming out what needs to grow and improve between now and Provo, the Miami game and ideally the playoffs but don’t rob yourself of the joy of watching a great team play. Regardless of how well a team does or doesn’t play in the regular season, their chances of a title are going to come down to ball bounces and the whims of the fates in December and January.

Whether you want to go by any available advanced stat or championship odds, you’re rooting for one of the best teams in the country and if you aren’t having fun with that just tune in Jan. 25, see if Notre Dame is playing and then if they win you can enjoy yourself. Before we get there, a few more stops. The road trip continues this weekend in Chapel Hill, and while North Carolina hasn’t been good they’ve been slightly more functional this season than last. Ash dominated Bobby Petrino last season but we’ll see what the new Tar Heel offensive coordinator can cook up with a bye week to work. Carr vs. Bill Belichick and Bob Diaco will be fun as well.

Four down, eight to go. Hopefully things do not get spooky with the calendar turning. We have an instant reaction episode up over on the podcast feed and there will be some more fun stuff there in the coming days (Spotify) (Apple). See you here in a week. Until then take care of yourselves and each other.