The term Spoilermakers for the Purdue football team has gotten a second wind and been repurposed in recent years, with the Boilermakers fashioning a 7-9 record in its 16 matchups against Top 25 teams since 2018, all as the betting underdog.
The origin, though, came from its formerly annual series with Notre Dame, which ran without interruption from 1946-2014 and gets revisited by the two in-state rivals Saturday in West Lafayette, Ind., at Ross-Ade Stadium (3:30 p.m. EDT; CBS-TV).
The game sold out in one hour after tickets were made available to the public this offseason.
The WSBT Gameday SportsBeat pregame radio show precedes the game from noon to 2:30 (wsbtradio.com/96.1 FM). Inside ND Sports has you covered after the game with two postgame shows on our YouTube channel.
Into The eNDzone will go live roughly five minutes after the conclusion of the game, with Inside ND Sports' Eric Hansen and former Notre Dame offensive lineman Bob Morton breaking down the game and taking your questions live. The Postgame Takeaways show on YouTube, with Hansen and Tyler James, will drop later on Saturday night.
Hansen will also appear on WSBT-TV's live pregame show from West Lafayette, Ind., with WSBT sports director Pete Byrne at 2:30 p.m. EDT.
The unranked and underdog 2024 Boilermakers (1-0), coming off an early bye week and a 49-0 drubbing of FCS bottom feeder Indiana State before that, will be shooting Saturday for their 17th win over a ranked Notre Dame team. It would be the ninth victory of that kind in the series as an unranked team.
Four of the previous 16 Purdue upsets of the Irish (1950, 1954, 1965, 1967) came with Notre Dame in the No. 1 spot in the polls. The 1950 team came into the matchup with a 39-game win streak and hadn’t lost at home to any team since eight seasons prior.
The Irish team coming to West Lafayette for the first time since 2013 lost at home last weekend, 16-14, to Northern Illinois. No. 18 Notre Dame (1-1) has won the last eight games in the series, including the most recent matchup, 27-13 in 2021 at Notre Dame Stadium.
There are plenty of individual players worth highlighting in this matchup. Our practice at Inside ND Sports is to funnel those down to four, two for each team. Here they are:
Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard
How could Riley Leonard not land on this list this week?
Conflicting reports all week about the senior starter’s availability in game three of the Irish phase of his college career have been a daily occurrence leading up to the Purdue game. That’s not to mention the cyber-spike in the sentiment from the Irish fan base for junior backup Steve Angeli to see his first game action since the Dec. 29 Sun Bowl, whether or not Leonard is healthy enough to play.
A Notre Dame source continues to indicate to Inside ND Sports that Leonard will play against Purdue, despite suffering an apparent injury to his left (non-throwing) shoulder late in the first half of the Northern Illinois loss.
He was not on the list of unavailable or questionable players that Notre Dame’s sports information office now puts out each Monday at noon of game week. That list will be updated on Saturday one hour before kickoff.
Irish head coach Marcus Freeman provided an update of sorts on Thursday, which went as follows:
“Riley's had a really good week of practice,” the coach said during his weekly Zoom with the media, “has made some really good throws and done a really good job in decision-making, taking care of the football.
“And everybody else has done a great job too in terms of what they've been asked to do, but nobody's been asked to do anything differently this week than previously.”
Leonard may not be asked to do anything differently on Saturday, but there is the expectation that the Duke transfer get more comfortable in the Irish offense and put up better numbers.
The 6-4, 216-pound Fairhope, Ala., product completed 20-of-32 passes last Saturday against Northern Illinois (2-0) for 163 yards with no touchdowns and two interceptions. In the running game, he netted 16 yards on 11 rushes with a TD.
Leonard did not have a single carry in the second half after being thrown to the turf, with his left arm pinned under him, by Northern Illinois defensive tackle Devonte O’Malley. Still, he played all 62 offensive snaps for the Irish as well as all 67 the week before in a 23-13 road win at Texas A&M.
His opposite number, Texas transfer Hudson Card, is off to a great start in 2024 after laboring in his first season with Purdue last season and finishing 86th nationally in pass efficiency (123.0). Card was 24-of-25 passing against Indiana State on Aug. 31 for 273 yards and four TDs (240.5 pass efficiency) before giving way to backup Ryan Browne.
Purdue safety Dillon Thieneman
Two of the nation’s best safeties will be on the field Saturday and two who combined for 13 interceptions last season — Notre Dame unanimous All-American Xavier Watts, and Purdue’s Dillon Thieneman, an AP third-team All-American as a freshman.
Watts tied for nation’s lead in picks at season’s end with seven. Thieneman was right behind him with six.
The 6-foot, 207-pound Thieneman was also big in the run game for Purdue in 2023, with his 106 tackles the most of any freshman at any position nationally last season. His 74 solo tackles erased Rod Woodson’s Purdue freshman record of 67 that had stood for 40 years.
The Westfield, Ind., product — a three-star prospect coming out of high school with four Power 4/5 offers — was the 2023 FWAA National Defensive Freshman of the Year and Thompson-Randle El Big Ten Freshman of the Year. He was named Big Ten Freshman of the Week five times, becoming the first defender in conference history to win any weekly award five times in a single season.
The mission this season is to bring the rest of the Purdue defense along with him, and without the Boilermakers’ best front-seven player — defensive end Nic Scourton — who transferred to Texas A&M and faced the Irish with his new team two weeks ago.
In head coach Ryan Walters’ first season leading Purdue, the Boilers finished 67th nationally in pass-efficiency defense, 70th in total defense and 98th in scoring defense.
Purdue running back Devin Mockobee
Purdue second-year offensive coordinator Graham Harrell is an Air Raid offense disciple from the late Mike Leach, but has a history of leaning more into balance than using the run game as an afterthought.
The Irish have faced Harrell twice before, in 2019 and 2021, during his three-year run at USC (the 2020 matchup was canceled due to the COVID-19) pandemic.
The version Notre Dame will see Saturday will have former walk-on running back Devin Mockobee as a key piece in what Harrell will try to challenge Irish defensive coordinator Al Golden with on Saturday.
The 6-foot, 207-pound junior (yes, same exact dimensions as Thieneman) is part of a running back tag team with senior Reggie Love III. Mockobee’s 89 yards on 11 carries (8.1 yards per carry) in the Purdue win over Indiana State nudged him to 1,868 career yards, well on track this season to become 14th player in Purdue history to surpass the 2,000-yard rushing mark.
The Irish have struggled to stop the run so far this season, ranking 100th nationally in rush defense after two games. They were 26th at the end of the 2023 season.
Two seasons ago, Mockobee set a Purdue freshman record with 968 rushing yards. while also adding nine touchdowns. Walters replaced Jeff Brohm as head coach ahead of the 2023 season after Brohm left to take the Louisville job. His first official act was to put Mockobee on scholarship.
Mockobee had a team-leading 807 rushing yards with six touchdowns in 2023. He is one of only four Big Ten players to rush for more than 800 yards in each of the past two seasons.
Notre Dame linebacker Jaylen Sneed
Speaking of ND’s No. 100 ranking in rush defense, junior linebacker Jaylen Sneed could be part of the solution if he can learn from last week’s mistakes.
Sneed played a career-high 41 snaps (out of a possible 65) in Notre Dame’s five-man linebacker rotation and saw his tackling grade (from Pro Football Focus) plummet from 80.2 against Texas A&M to something that looks like a typo (34.0) against Northern Illinois. Twenty-five of Sneed’s 41 snaps were Huskies running plays.
He was far from alone in his run fits against Northern Illinois. Only three Irish players had rush defense film grades above 70 — freshman linebacker Kingstonn Viliamu-Asa (77.3), backup safety Rod Heard II (75.4) and All-America safety Xavier Watts (73.0).
Rotational interior lineman Donovan Hinish had a rare off day in the run with a team-low grade of 38.2 on 14 run snaps.
The Irish also benched starting defensive end RJ Oben during the game last Saturday after 11 largely ineffective snaps. However, with backup Josh Burnham (ankle) listed as questionable, Oben may need to play a lot against Purdue.
“Be steady. Be consistent,” Golden said of his advice to the Duke grad transfer. “Doesn’t have to all happen in one day, one practice, one game. I was telling him the story of [Ohio State transfer Javonte Jean-]Baptiste a year ago. It was like Game 4 or Game 5. Then he turned the corner, and the rest is history.
“Just keep getting better. Block everything else out. Just get better every day, improve your skills, improve your knowledge of the defense, play faster, give great effort and the rest will take care of itself. It’s pretty simple. Don’t make it complicated.”
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