We're driven by this search for better, but when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search "match" with Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Ditch the busy work, use Indeed for scheduling, screening, and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. Enaging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day, Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences, so the more you use Indeed, the better it gets. Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great, talent fast. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com/bluewire. Just go to indeed.com/bluewire right now and support our show by saying that you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com/bluewire, terms and conditions apply. And to hire, you need Indeed. Let's dive into keys to victory, guys, and we're going to try to get through the somewhat quickly because at the end of the day, the takeaway fellows is, yeah, these keys are important to the margin of victory, ultimately. At the end of the day, it's the stuff we talked about beforehand, and then things like winning the turnover battle and there's field position or as always important in the road game, those things are always important. Let's talk about the offense and guess what my number one key as fellows, it's going to be starting fast and again, I'm going to keep doing this until they actually start doing this with some what of regularity. We're now in the year three, Ryan, of you and I doing prediction shows together, we're start fast is still the number one key, and I keep saying the caveat's going to be when this team shows that they can kind of do this regularly, I'm going to stop having it be my number one key. And guess what? They still haven't done it. This ties into majorly the earlier part that we were talking about is a fast start tells me that this team is coming into this game fired up. It's telling me that this team is coming with the right mentality because it won't be about execution as much as we're just going to come off, we're going to blow you off the ball, we're going to make place, we're going to make our reads, we're going to make our catches, we're going to make our stops on defense, we're going to give our offense, you know, good field position and they're going to go punch it in again. I think this offense especially is incredibly important to this game because the offense starting fast is going to have a much bigger impact on the defense than the defense having a good start. The defense, if I'm on a, Ryan, you played linebacker, all right, let me ask you this. If you played linebacker Notre Dame the last two years and you watched what your offense did the first two weeks, if your offense comes out the first couple of drives and they're punting or selling for field goals, are you not going to have a little bit of a, here we go again. Guess this is going to be on us fellas. Yeah, you'd like for them not to have that mentality, but we're also human beings. I mean, that that's a big thing too is they need to have a fast start to not only give themselves confidence to not only let Purdue know that this is going to be a long day fellas. We're going to make you pay for what Northern Illinois, what we did against Northern Illinois. But the other part, Ryan, I think the defense needs it. I think the defense needs to know that, hey guys, it's not all on you anymore. Our bad. We got you. We should not be one in one when you give up 16 points. Yes, you needed to do this, this and this and this, but this is on us. I think it also sends a signal to your defense and hey, we're going to be just fine fellas. Let's rock and roll together as a team. Prize picks is America's number one daily fantasy sports app with over five million active members. Prize picks is the easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports. Unlike other apps on prize picks, it's just you against the numbers. All you do is pick more or less on two to six player stat projections and watch the winnings roll in. Get in on the daily action with your friends and become part of the prize picks community today. You can now win up to a hundred times your money on prize picks with as little as four correct picks. You can turn $10 into a thousand dollars. I'm a Bears fan, so this one gets me really excited. One Caleb Williams passing yard gets you one win on prize picks every week in September. That's right. One yard gets you an automatic win every football weekend in September, four weeks of free W's. Don't miss this deal on prize picks because it's gone when September ends. Think Tyreek Hill get more than 90.5 yards in week one. Aaron Jones runs for more than 66 and a half yards. Cook up hot takes with your friends and win real money this football season. When you and your crew run your game on prize picks, prize picks also has college picks all ready to go for you as well. Get in before game one hits and you can predict how many passing yards your favorite college quarterback will hit. For me, I think Riley Leonard is going to go above 2,550 and a half yards. So I'm going to take that one and I'm going to combine it with Quinn yours to throw 2,999 and a half yards. Put those together and bang bang boom baby. I'm going to be a winner. You just wait and see. I'm coming up on my 1 year anniversary of depositing my first $10 and I received an instant $10 bonus. If you have the skills, you can play for a shot at turning your $10 into a thousand dollars. Download the prize picks app today and use code IRISH for a first deposit match up to a hundred dollars. That's code IRISH on prize picks for a deposit match up to a hundred dollars. Prize picks run your game. You've had Wendy's nugs dipped in sauce, but have you had them covered in sauce? Wendy's new saucy nugs takes the crispy and spicy nugs that you love and turn them up to 11. Choose between flavors like buffalo, honey barbecue, garlic palm or if you're a real heat seeker, try spicy ghost pepper only on Wendy's signature spicy nugs. I dare you. That's seven delicious ways to try the nugs you already love. Take a flavor, grab some extra napkins and prepare to nug like you've never nugged before. For a whole new way to nug, it's gotta be Wendy's at participating US Wendy's. I think division could be created in a football team very easily if one side of the ball isn't holding up to the end of the bargain, right, like if I'm a, I have literally been on teams where our defense was great or offense stunk and we kind of disassociated ourselves with the offense a little bit because we're like, they're not, they're not, we're not on the same team right now. Like we're basically playing against each other at this point, right? So I think if you're a Notre Dame fan, this might be the biggest key that you want to see this weekend, whether it's Riley Leonard, Steve Angeli or anybody else at the quarterback position, you want this offense to get right. You want it to happen quickly and you want it to roll throughout the rest of the game because defensively, even in a rough game, even in a, in a bad game, Notre Dame is still going to keep you in the game, typically defensively, offensively, we have no confidence right now. Like where is a, where is the pessimism coming from Notre Dame fans right now? It's that we have no answers offensively and we have no idea if that's going to happen this year, next year or anywhere into the future under coach Freeman. So I want to see this team come out aggressive because ultimately if you let it rip and you're accurate with the football and you take some chances in the passing game, Notre Dame's way more athletic than Purdue is in the passing game. Way more athletic. If you hit the edges, they're way more athletic, but ultimately it's going to start to what is this coaching staff preaching this week? I have no idea what they're preaching, but I hope they're preaching that guys, we're going to come out and be aggressive and we're going to set the tone here and we're going to make a statements. If that is, then I feel great, but if it comes out and it's methodical and it's slow and it's inside run and it slides out of the backfield and it's hitches and it's, it's that type of stagnation. It's what Marcus Freeman said, Ryan, don't take any chances. We don't need you to be a playmaker, do exactly what we tell you to do. If it's that same type of robotic offense, then yeah, we got a great defense. We can lean on them. That's what I keep telling people. This isn't a trestleball problem. This is a, you're still a defensive coordinator problem. Yeah. That's the problem and, and we'll see kind of how that goes. And I don't want to hear about, oh, he clarified this, he clarified that guys. This is what the offense has been for three years. I don't need, I don't need him to clarify by Thursday what he meant from that. We know what he meant because we saw it with our own eyes. So what he says now is irrelevant. What do we always talk about? What do we always talk about in recruiting and anything else? Read the actions, not the words at the end of the day. I couldn't care less about what he said in a presser. I couldn't care less about what he clarified in a presser. I couldn't care less about any lip service that is out there from anybody. And honestly, you guys might not care about it from us either in our analysis, which is fine. But all we can talk about and all we can break down ultimately is what we see on Saturdays, right? And, and what I see on Saturdays is a defensive driven team that doesn't want to make any mistakes. And turnover margin is a big thing in football games. Absolutely it is. There's no doubt about it. Usually the team that turns the ball over less wins the football game more often than I think NFL teams this past weekend were 10 and one when they won the turnover margin, I think. So then obviously there are some teams that, you know, just kind of split the difference. But either way, turnovers matter, but being aggressive is how you create explicit plays. Being aggressive is how you make opposing offenses turn the football over because then they start pressing and making mistakes because they're not built to be that type of team. So I hate the passiveness. I don't like the methodical word, the word methodical anymore. I want to see a team that's willing to make some mistakes because although, you know, John Elway and Brett Fav and some of those guys, like they would throw a lot of interceptions at times. But you know, also what they would do, make a lot of big plays, buddy, a lot of huge plays. I want some risk. Give me some risk if I'm going to do that. To tie into that two guys is kind of part two of the keys to victory is no name has to be a little bit more diverse, have to be a little bit more creative, they have to be a little bit more multiple with how they go at teams, right? I mean, one of the things we've seen is a very standard approach to how they line up and go at people. There hasn't been a lot of a lot there actually thought they did a decent amount of this against A&M, you know, where they get Jeremiah love out of the backfield and get create some match ups. I felt like they just kind of line, they were very basic against Northern Illinois. There was no that the pre snap movement has been very so far has been very, okay, I know it's coming based on on when the tight ends moving in this way, it's like, okay, this is what's coming in Northern Illinois was pretty keyed into that. So it was Texas A&M. So I want to see a little bit more pre snap creativity that is designed towards getting your guys into match ups and getting your, I mean, take a page out of Northern Illinois's book, not that you're going to go do all the stuff that they did. But hey guys, have, and we've seen this from Mike Dembrock in the past, we saw this from Mike Dembrock in the spring and in fall camp, but, you know, be a little bit more creative with your personnel, look, 11 personnel works great. It's probably be your number one personnel grouping, but you've got to throw some other stuff of people to give them some other things to think about. And they're not doing that right now. So I want to see some of that. And then I also want to see a lot more. I want to see them to be a little bit more diverse with the scheme, right? I think we talked about that after the game, Trevor, maybe as you and I that talked about this on Tuesday, but right now everything they're doing is horizontal stretch stuff. And it makes it a lot easier to defend that because you can be more limited with your cover structure in that situation. So Trevor, that's a big thing for me is I want to see this offense come out and it ties into what Ryan's referring to aggressiveness also, it part of aggressiveness is saying, hey, we're going to come at you a lot of different ways. We're going to throw some stuff at you because we're going to try to generate some big play opportunities. Northern Illinois knew they could not just methodically go up and down the field and score a bunch of touchdowns on Notre Dame. They had to do some things to create some big plays early. And then that back to Notre Dame off. And once Notre Dame got backed off, then they win at Notre Dame. But early in the game, they were taking shots, trying to creatively take some shots. And Notre Dame needs to kind of that's that's aggressiveness, not throwing 15 post routes. It's doing things to create those big plays. And that's something Notre Dame has not really done a good job of so far this year. And that's something I want to see more of in this game. Light it. Hey, Irish breakdown listeners, it's Urban Meyer. This fall, the game changes, join me, Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram and broadcaster Rob Stone as we bring you a new perspective on football and culture every week. We will be joined by the biggest name in sports and talk about everything inside and outside of the lines. Let us guide you through a new era of college football. Watch triple option on YouTube or listen on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. Hey Irish breakdown listeners, it's Matt Liner. I've got a podcast called Throwbacks with actor J for R. Well, we'll be talking all things sports, but also so much more. We'll give you the behind the scenes stories from my days as the quarterback on an iconic college football team to Jerry's days as a star on an iconic TV series. So subscribe to Throwbacks on YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. They need to get more aggressive with their personnel groupings that they have on the field too, which you touched on a little bit as well. We at Irish Breakdown speculated a lot between how much would we see Jadarion Price and Jeremiah Love on the field. You and I talked about it on Tuesday. When you have a struggling quarterback like that, there is no secret that Notre Dame's offense right now has three major key playmakers and it's Bo Collins, Jeremiah Love and Jadarion Price. So in my opinion, to help open up the offense and get more creative, pre snap is to get all three of those guys on the field at the same time. Make it to where the defense has so much to game plan for pre snap that it will just naturally open things up on the backside. I agree. We can't, you know, it's so tough to say because I'm, I'm under, I'm trying to think of how to wear this. Under the, the notion that I want the offense to be simplified a little bit, so Riley Leonard's mind can slow down, but you can't sacrifice being diverse to be more simplified, I guess, if that makes sense. You can be simple and creative at the same time. Yeah. It's north. Again, you just watched a team do that. All the creativity, 90% of the creativity that Northern Illinois did this past weekend was pre snap. That's the, like you're not asking, you need to be multiple with your plays, but it doesn't mean you add 57 more plays into your system. Hey, we're going to still run inside zone, but we're going to get to it in a lot of different ways. We're going to run it four or five different ways. When they did that against Texas A&M, they made some adjustments. They were running inside zone read, A&M was eaten up. They were crashing with the end and looping the linebacker. They were, or they would crash the linebacker hard and then slam or the end hard. And so what Notre Dame did was they went zone read lock. And then blocked the backside out and then boom, two big plays right up the middle. You know what I mean? So like there was some level of adjustment to where, hey, we got to have some different tools in our toolbox. But again, creativity doesn't mean you have to run a million plays. I actually think right now maybe they're running a little bit more of that and not, which is taking away from some of the stuff they're doing pre snap. You know what I mean? Mix up some of your looks, but get more creative to say, hey, look, we're going to do this. We're not just going to line up both columns here. We're going to line up in this and we're going to motion bow columns out because we're going to get that corner off of him because we think if we can get brought bow on a free run that he's got a chance to do this, right? Or hey, we think if we can get that safety rolling down on this motion across that that's going to open up an opportunity. Ryan, you see how their safety is adjust to motion, right? There's some things you can do with that to say, hey, look, if we use this motion, we're going to get Jeremiah Love matched up against a 250 pound linebacker in space. You know what I mean? In this type of look, we think we can get, you know, Jaden Harrison matched up against a not very fast safety on a wheel route. We think we can do something, right? I mean, that's the point. It doesn't require you to run 50,000 new plays. It just means, hey, we're going to use some creativity pre snap and just a little bit post snap while running the stuff we run to go at them. I mean, right? I mean, we on the same page with that, Ryan, it doesn't require a million different new plays to run. Well, I would, I would quantify it this way. You know how damaged we are as Notre Dame fans Trevor? We saw Northern Illinois run a jet motion and a wheel off of it and we were like, oh my God, well, how creative and it's just like, that's, that's high school stuff, bro. Like we do that high school. And it's so just, again, I think I'd demonstrate how flat Notre Dame's offense is just from a creativity perspective, just like the basic level of creativity. Cause nothing that we've seen has been diverse from like a couple of the big plays that Notre Dame has given up. It's just, it's just, it's just ran well. Like Notre Dame's just not, they're not cohesive right now offensively. And they definitely aren't taking any chances at the end of the day. So yeah, it's, you can still be true to your philosophy and also have some cool stuff off of it. Right? Ultimately, I, you can. And it's, it's frustrating that we haven't seen that at this point. It's frustrating. So let's go to key number three fellows is we're going to keep rocking and rolling on this one. Key number three is you've got to be physical upfront. I don't know, Ryan. I purposely did not have dominate up front because I don't know if this offensive line is, is in a position where they're going to dominate anyone right now. That's not a criticism. It's like, again, it's a true freshman left tackle, a red shirt, freshman at left guard, true red shirt sophomores at, or red shirt, that's not a real thing, a true red shirt sophomore, a red shirt sophomore at center, right guard and right tackle. And you're not a real big line. I think they can play at a high level, but I don't think this is, this is a defense that I look at. I say, boy, they're just going to blow 330 pound cold Brevard off the ball, you know, but they need to be physical up front. And it goes back to the, it's take a recipe from the A&M game. If you're physical and you get a body on a body, the one thing Purdue has big and strong. One thing Purdue lacks on defense speed. So if you can get a body on a body with your offensive line, your backs are going to go off. It's, it's, that's the, that's the big thing. So I just need this offensive line, right? I don't need it to be world beaters. They don't need to look like 2017 O line. They just have to be physical, compete, be physical. And here's a little caveat. Stop pulling jerseys Ashton Craig, please for the love of God, please stop doing that. Cause you should have about eight holding penalties right now. You're better than that. But they just need to be physical really at the end of the day, right? And that's the big takeaway. If they're that, then I think Notre Dame soft fence is going to roll. Cause that now if they're physical up front to your point earlier, right now the speed becomes the, the, the, the, the talking point, you're not getting dominated up front. Your speed now becomes the, the, the terminal of how of success. And that's when they're able thrive in my opinion. Well, Purdue's got one chunky interior defensive line and it's like 340 pounds just about, but otherwise they're a bunch of tall dudes. That's cool. Or far. That's who I was referring to. Like you're just taking me off the ball. Five yards. It's just not going to happen. But the, the rest of the defensive line is kind of tall and angular, right? Like Jeff Ramba and, and Will Helts, like they're six, six guys. And Jeff Ramba's like verified at six, six, even like he is a tall in the interior defensive lineman. First and foremost, just like the easy general technical stuff, you gotta come out low and hard. Well, you know, the pad level matters, being able to get move guys off the ball, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, we know that even though it's, it, Anthony Knapp has a couple of games in his belly, even though San Pendleton and Emil Wagner have a couple of games in their belt. They've experienced offensive lineman at the end of the day. And when you're inexperienced, I always talk about it, but I want guys to make fast mistakes at the end of the day because there's going to be a time where you take a improper angle or maybe you didn't know exactly what the play call was or there was an audible and you're a little bit off your game and you're a little bit just like technically just kind of all over the place in your mind. Just make it fast, brother. Like just go make a play. I mean, at the end of the day, right? Actually, I thought Anthony Knapp has had some really good moments in week two. I thought that he, you know, he held his, he battled against Texas A&M and I thought he had some good, good moments against Northern Illinois. I think the whole offense line has had good moments over the last two weeks, but at the end of the day, this Purdue team outside of the Theanaman kid at safety, who's in absolute stud, their defense line is the best part of their defense by a landslide. Like that is it. Notre Dame's able to neutralize that team and just win reps, just win reps. Notre Dame has a chance to have a big day offensively because the defensive line, if you get past that first level, you have a chance to make a lot of plays because I'm not impressed by the corners. Again, Theanaman's a good player, but he's one safety. He's one player in the back seven there. I think that Notre Dame or back six, I guess, technically because they're a 3-4 team and they're going to move their guys up on the ball a lot, but whatever, different conversation for a different day. But I do think that they have a chance to make a lot of plays if they get to the second and third levels, it comes down to neutralizing the offensive line. Let's go into point four because it ties into that. Number four, the key to this success is the pass game has to get going. They've got to attack the perimeter, they've got to create match ups where they get their best players against some of the not as good DBs. They've got a true freshman corner who's actually should still be a senior in high school. You've got to do things to make them think and to create Iso's and then you've got to be willing to take some shots. I'm not someone who is a throw 15, 20 deep balls a game, but you've got to early in the game come out and be willing to show we're going to throw the ball down the field. You can't just come up and play nine, ten guys within the first five, six yards of the line scrimmage. Those are all things that they're going to they're going to have to do guys is they're going to have to have some really good pass game. They're going to have to get the pass game going. They don't need to come on throw for 350 yards, but the pass game has to be competent. You need at least like a 230 to 240 yard game where you come out, you're efficient, you make some plays down the field and you let Purdue know, no, you can't just shut down a run game to win this football game. You're going to have to defend the entire field. 100% utilize the speed that you have at your skill positions. That'd be my ask for helping to open up the passing game and no to your point, Brian. I'm not saying this is NCAA 25 and we're going to line up and run four verts 25 times this game, right? My ask is use pre snap motion to create match ups to get the Jaden Greathouses, the Chris Mitchells, the Bo Collins into space, right? Get the ball into the hands of your playmakers quickly, look to get the tight ends involved early. And I think Notre Dame has a good chance to jumpstart in the class passing game. I think they should also capitalize on throwing the ball on early downs as well because if I'm talking about a Purdue team that I do think brings a lot of I don't want to call it exotic, but they bring it different types of pressures because they have a talented defensive lineman. They also have Kydron Jenkins at middle linebacker now who is a defensive end by trade and probably will be some type of edge player and whatever professional league he ends up playing in. They're going to move him around. They're going to blitz him from different spots. I do think the best way to stop pressure early downs, especially when you're a run blitzing type of team, which they kind of are schematically. I do think that throwing an early downs, you know, what that's just getting the ball out quick and gaining five to six, you know, creating a couple of explosives. But I think if Notre Dame's able to have some success throwing the ball on first down early downs, just in general, I do think that I could kind of shock Purdue a little bit because if I'm if I'm if I'm any team playing Notre Dame right now, I am like, do we're run blitzing on every first down because they are going to run the ball every single first down. It's the most predictable thing of all time. So let's heat them up a little bit and try to get them in in second and 12, second and 10, second and nine. Then I do think that Notre Dame should be able to open up a little bit on early towns. 100%. Yeah, to look at what you were saying from a big picture and you hit the nail on the head at the end there is just just when on first down, don't get behind schedule. Don't put Riley Leonard in a position where he has to try to put on the Superman cape on second and nine to not stall a drive. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) A King's Super's Pharmacy Care is making it easy to get vaccinated. Care is helping you stay protected from flu, COVID, and RSV. Seasonal vaccines are available seven days a week with evening hours. Care is giving you a shot at staying healthy this season. Walk in whenever is best and get multiple vaccines in one visit at your local King's Super's Pharmacy. So come and get the protection you need while protecting those around you. King's Super's A World of Care is in store. Visit king supers.com/vaccines for more restrictions and exclusions apply seaside for details.
