Trainwrecked: Notre Dame football throttles Purdue to get back on track

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — There were Irish inklings Steve Angeli would take snaps for Notre Dame against Purdue on Saturday. Sure enough, on a sun-drenched, sweaty September day in somewhere in the heart of Indiana, he did.

Just not under the circumstances anyone envisioned.

Angeli took over for Riley Leonard as the Irish’s quarterback on Notre Dame’s first possession post-halftime. Reading that any time between Sept. 8 and 13 would’ve prompted you to believe Leonard’s play was poor, again, and Notre Dame’s swap was out of necessity not wanting to repeat the wrongdoings of shocking loss to Northern Illinois.

Not the case.

Leonard had 112 passing yards, 100 rushing yards on the dot and 3 touchdowns, all of which came on the ground. By the time Angeli stepped onto the field for the first time this season, Notre Dame was up by 42 points largely because of Leonard. He and the Irish beat the Boilermakers like a drum, 66-7.

“I’m proud of the guys,” head coach Marcus Freeman said. “Enjoy this victory, as I told them. It’s hard to win. We saw last week, it’s hard to win. So enjoy it.”

Angeli threw Notre Dame’s first passing touchdown of the season, 11 quarters into it, on his first attempt of the afternoon. The play-action toss went to a wide-open Cooper Flanagan over the middle for 28 yards.

Angeli also connected with graduate senior wide receiver Jayden Harrison on a beautiful 42-yard over-the-shoulder dime. Leonard’s longest competition through three games was a 23-yard catch-and-run to senior wideout Jayden Thomas.

This game wasn’t about what Leonard can or cannot do with his arm, though. It was about bouncing back from an ineffective outing in Notre Dame’s loss to Northern Illinois, and he did just that. He became the first college football player to account for 100 or more passing and rushing yards and 3 rushing touchdowns in a first half since Louisville’s Lamar Jackson in 2016 — the year he won the Heisman Trophy.

Could Leonard have done more to assure Irish fans he’ll be a capable passer in subsequent games? Absolutely. Was he the catalyst for a much-needed Notre Dame victory and a main factor in deciding the outcome by halftime? Also yes.

“For this game, I was extremely prepared,” Leonard said. “All week I was itching to get onto the field and be able to prove myself.”

He had some major help from his talented tailbacks, sophomore Jeremiyah Love and junior Jadarian Price. The former reached pay dirt a 48-yard run-around-the-edge and see-ya-later touchdown on his second touch of the game to start the scoring. The latter capped the first half with a sizzling 70-yard score that called to memory the 47-yard touchdown he got the Irish out of the mud with in the second half at Texas A&M.

Love finished with 109 yards on 10 carries. Price had 86 on 8. In all, Notre Dame ran for 362 as a team.

“Shoot, it was great man,” Love said. “We practiced hard, trusted our guys, and to come out in the first half and do that well rushing, it’s a great thing to see.”

Defensively, Notre Dame played its best ballgame of the season up front and it wasn’t close. The Irish got to Purdue quarterback Hudson Card for 4 sacks after only notching 1 in their first two games. Card was under duress all day, and it finally came to a head with an inexplicable interception cough-up that led to sophomore defensive end Boubacar Traore waltzing into the end zone for a 34-yard interception return to put Notre Dame up 35-0, preceding Price’s touchdown that made it 42-0 in the final minute of the first half.

Notre Dame had 15 players with at least 2 tackles, none of them going over 4. Everyone made plays. Not just the top-end guys. The Irish confidently flew to the football in ways they didn’t against NIU.

“Everybody was super locked in,” Traore said. “We knew what we had to do coming into this game, especially after what happened last week.”

Who knows what Purdue’s base-line level of play is; the Boilermakers played an FCS opponent in Week 1 and had a bye in Week 2. The Boilermakers were picked 18th out of 18 teams in the preseason Big Ten media poll. But absolute domination is absolute domination, and Notre Dame had it on both sides of the ball in giving Purdue its worst loss by margin of defeat in program history.

“This is who we are,” Leonard added. “This is who we believe we truly are.”