Boilermakers Buried

Irish give their fans a much needed breather with a convincing win over Purdue.

By Jon Paul Potts
1990 Scholastic Football Review

Football coaches frequently speak of “balanced attacks” when they discuss offense.

‘The key to a successful football team is a good passing game to balance a running game,” they might say. Unless you’re Purdue coach Fred Akers.

Despite a whopping 354 yards passing, the Boilermakers running game sputtered and died on the grass of Notre Dame Stadium as the Irish dismantled Purdue yet again, delivering a 37-11 beating.

“You can choose to rush or choose to cover,” said Irish coach Lou Holtz. “We felt going into the ballgame that they could not beat us throwing the football. What we could not allow them to do was run the football. Our front seven played the whole ballgame and they played very well.”

To get a sense of how completely Messrs. Zorich and Stonebreaker, et al dominated Boilermaker line, check out some of these numbers.

Purdue rushed 19 times for 24 net yards. That comes to an astoundingly pathetic 1.3 yards per carry. The Boilermakers fumbled the ball twice and lost both those fumbles. The Irish recorded seven tackles for losses totaling 42 yards.

Perhaps the most telling statistic of all was that, at halftime, with Notre Dame winning by a 27-3 cushion and the game all but decided, the Boilermakers, a Big Ten team mind you, had recorded ONE yard rushing. That’s three feet. That is 36 inches of rushing in 30 minutes of football. It doesn’t get much worse than that if you’re a Purdue fan, or even worse, a Purdue coach.

The Boilermakers ran a run-and-shoot offense, but they did a lot more shootin ‘ than runnin’.

“We just didn’t execute when we had to,” said Purdue wideout Curtis McManus. “When we had to get in the endzone, we couldn’t make the big plays. We had a couple of plays where we could have scored but just didn’t. I seriously thought we had a chance to beat them.”

For the top-ranked Irish, the 37-11 cakeWalk proved a welcome relief from the incredible pressure endured in the fIrst two victories over Michigan and Michigan State.

Coach Holtz chose to grind it out on the ground against the overmatched Purdue defense and his charges were very successful. Led by Raghib Ismail’s 82 yards rushing, the Irish chewed up some serious real estate, amassing 362 yards on 65 carries.

“It was pretty plain to me that the best team won,” said Akers. “They’re the kind of football team that you can’t make mistakes on, that you can’t give an inch to. You give those guys an inch, they take a mile, and they took a couple of miles today.” Well, Fred, it was really only 502 yards of total offense, but the depressed exaggeration is understandable.

The highlight of the Notre Dame rushing game, and of the whole day in general, was a brilliant end around for touchdown run by Ismail. “There was no one out there,” said Ismail. “As soon as Mirer made the fake and pitched it to me, I knew I could take the lane and go all the way. Tony Smith really helped me out by blocking his man all the way into the end zone. They aren’t all as easy as that one.”

On first-and-ten from the Irish 36 yard line, the junior flanker took the pitch on the left and turned the corner behind a Derek Brown block. He broke a tackle at midfield and took off down the sideline, charging into the end zone through a Purdue defender and an unfortunate official.

“When I called [the reverse], I thought, ‘Gee, that might have been a dumb call,'” said Holtz. “We have never run that reverse except once in practice where we pitched the ball. All year long we ran it where we handed it off. But we pitched it and executed and I didn’t expect it to go all they way. I thought maybe we could get a first down.”

Sophomore quarterback Rick Mirer also had a good game. He passed for 130 yards on 11 completions in 17 attempts. But, more importantly, the offense put in a consistent effort for the first time in the season. While the Irish had been plagued by offensive anemia in the second and third quarters of the Michigan and Michigan State game, Notre Dame scored three times in the second frame and twice in the third as they increased their 6-3 lead to a 37-3 margin.

“It felt really good to play four solid quarters of football for once,” said Mirer. “When we got off real well in the first quarter, I knew we wouldn’t have to come from behind again. We did pretty much what we wanted.”

The defense played great against the run, but those 354 yards passing by Eric Hunter were not something that could be easily dismissed. Senior All-American Todd Lyght was unavailable once again due a hamstring injury and a freshman started in his spot at free cornerback. But the front seven saved the secondary’s neck with their dominant play on the line of scrimmage and two timely turnovers.

In the second quarter, the Boilermakers were threatening in Irish territory when Scott Kowalkowski drilled Purdue’s Hunter squarely in the back, forcing the quarterback to cough up the ball. Zorich recovered at the the Notre Dame 36, and on the next play, Ismail broke his big reverse and the rout was on.

“Hunter was very loose and hard to catch when he was scrambling,” said Zorich. “I was getting tired chasing him around, but we caught him and hit him hard a few times in the second half.” Kowalkowski also forced and recovered another Hunter fumble in the third quarter, setting up a Shawn Davis one-yard touchdown run eight plays later.

“I tried to knock the ball out of his hands on the second fumble,” said the senior outside linebacker. ”Purdue is a much improved football team, but we came after them a lot today. This was definitely a confidence-builder for us.”

Kowalkowski may have had his confidence boosted by the defense’s performance, but after the game the coach took a quick breath and cast a wary eye to the  future and next Saturday’s game against the Stanford Cardinal. said Holtz. “We’re 3-0 and, gee, that’s great. But wow, Stanford next week – a team that can pass the ball as well if not better than the Purdue football team we faced today,” said Holtz.

If only Holtz had knowns just how prophetic his words would turn out to be.