Ah, Purdue, the pride of West LaFayette.  Tossing the Irish and Boilermakers together in recent years almost always results in shoot-outs, at least for one side (oh, 2004, I hate you).  Even in the Year of Infinite Offensive Sorrow, the Irish tossed up 19 points on the board, on the road, and then quickly put Golden Tate back inside bubble wrap until the fourth quarter of the San Diego State game.  This year's Purdue team seems to be in the same mold as the last few seasons, only Kory Sheets is the lone tailback after Jaycen Taylor's preseason injury and Curtis Painter, a veteran in years but not completion percentage, has no one to throw to.

The Boilermakers should almost assuredly be 3-0, blowing all sorts of leads and missing a ton of opportunities (field goals) against Oregon.  The Ducks got a "D-" from their quarterback in the game and still managed to eke out a win on the merits of their running game (7.1 yards per pop) and a punt return.  Painter was nearly as bad as Justin Roper, completing only 26 of 50 passes for just over two hundred yards, no touchdowns and two picks.  The man who staked the Boilermakers to their 20-6 and nearly pulled off the upset over their PAC-10 visitor was running back Kory Sheets, who rumbled for 180 yards and two scores, including an eighty yarder to kick off the festivities.

Their third game was a come-from-behind-after-being-ahead victory, prevailing over Tim Tebow North Dan LeFevour and the Central Michigan Chippewas.  Painter was better (27 of 36, 261, 1 TD) but still had a pick and a late fumble that almost cost Purdue the game.  Riding into save the day was again Sheets, who ripped off the 46-yard highlight run you all probably saw on Saturday night or Sunday morning.  Just incase you didn't, its right here:

Before that run, the fightin' Chippewas, not necessarily known for their stout run defense, had held Sheets to 45 yards on 16 carries.  Whether the Irish face Oregon Kory or Central Michigan Kory will have perhaps the biggest impact on the game.  If Joe Tiller gets behind, he is apt to just start chucking it, which would certainly be in the favor of the home team.  While the Purdue run defense appears susceptible to a strong dose of Armando Allen, Robert Hughes and James Aldridge, if the offensive line isn't getting a push early, don't be afraid to try a re-enactment of last year's aerial show to Tate and Duval Kamara (with special guest, Michael Floyd!).  Sheets destroyed the Irish last year (141 on 27 carries, 1 TD), and anything the home team can do to tricksie Tiller into putting the game in Painter's red zone-wary hands would greatly increase the chances of a Notre Dame victory.

Much like Michigan State, there aren't a bevy of Boilermaker sites, but I did stumble across a fantastic one in Off The Tracks.   The author did a great Q&A with our SBN Oregon affiliate, Addicted to Quack, before their game which may answer a few questions you have about the team in Tiller's final campaign.  This is one note from the site that I'm assuming (hoping?) the coaching staff picks up on.

Defending the running back screen - This is not a difficult concept to understand. Still, we have been vulnerable to this play for years. When you have an avalanche of guys pressuring the quarterback and he keeps dumping the ball off to his running back for huge gains maybe, just maybe, we should assign a linebacker, safety, cornerback, towel boy, or someone to cover the running back no matter what and light him up as soon as he catches the ball.

This is not hard to stop. The most infuriating thing is that we continue to struggle stopping it. A team runs it, has success, and we don't adjust. When they lined up for the two point conversion I actually said they should run the same play again. Even if they announced they were running the same play as they lined up I doubted our ability to stop it. It's like they were playing Playstation and kept running it over and over again (aka HB iso strongside with trips left).If we had figured out how to stop this and the QB scramble we would have held Central Michigan to half its yards gained.

Intrigued?  I thought so.  T-Mill mentions this has been a problem for the Boilermakers dating back to Kyle Orton's final game, a 2004 Sun Bowl loss to Arizona State (a fantastic New Years Eve game, if I recall correctly).  Not only should the Irish work on dumping the ball off to Allen and Hughes in this capacity, but work Tate across the middle of the field for some wide receiver screens.  If Weis and Haywood haven't figured out at this point that Tate needs to get the ball into his hands as many times and in as many capacities as possible throughout the game, the entire offensive coaching staff needs to be axed.

The forecast for Saturday is calling for a perfect day in South Bend (78 degrees, sunny, 100% chance of making me depressed I'm not there), so unlike the Michigan game, every offensive option will be available to both sides.  Despite Ringer's final tally and the claims of total Spartan offensive line domination in some Irish commentary, I thought the defense played well against Michigan State.  If someone had told you the Spartans would have 16 points and the Irish were driving late in the fourth quarter, you'd have felt very confident about a Notre Dame victory.  Sheets has been the go-to guy for the Boilermakers all year, and Tiller would be smart to lean on him unless the game gets out of hand.

That's why Weis and Haywood, much like they should have done against Michigan State, should try to put as many points up on the board as they can early and make it seen out of hand.  Try to limit Sheets' carries due to the score situation, and put the onus on Painter to win the game.  He's not throwing to Dustin Keller, Dorien Bryant, Taylor Stubblefield or even Selwyn Lymon anymore.  Instead, it's Greg Orton and a bunch of guys I assure you you've never heard of before.  Aaron Valentin took a slant route 57 yards against Central Michigan and Kevin Smith is a converted quarterback with some size, but they're rather unproven at this early stage in the season.  I'd rather see Painter throw it fifty times than have Sheets lug the ball thirty times.

Another note about the Boilermakers is that their weakness on defense is their linebacking corps, the same deficiency Michigan was trying to overcome.  MGoBlog had a great piece up earlier in the week showing how the Irish run attack functioned against the Wolverines, working on taking out the highly-touted defensive linemen and leaving the linebackers to do whatever damage they could.  This sort of strategy did not work against Michigan State, with folks like Greg Jones there to clean things up.  Against Purdue?  Let us give Asaph Schwapp, who had one of his better blocking days against Michigan, another crack at working over the Purdue defensive line.  Since the loss of Anthony Weaver, the Boilermaker d-line hasn't had a big scary guy, so hopefully that translates to quality pass protection for Jimmah and a decent running game.

This contest appears to be a total toss-up, and depending on which Irish coaching staff shows up (probably not a good thing to be saying that on a team filled with underclassmen, but hey, not they can't audible every play), this is certainly winnable.  The line opened with the Irish as slight favorites, but a rush of money towards the Boilermakers caused Vegas to bump the line back towards "Pick ‘Em."  The Michigan State game was a write-off for me before it happened (my tune changed upon realizing how vastly winnable it was, but I had made my peace with a loss prior to it starting), but this Purdue game is far more important.  It is at home, and if the Irish want to show real strides this season, they need to defeat a team not horrendously awful or still learning a totally new offensive system while gift-wrapping six turnovers.  If Painter wants to be as generous as Steven Threet and the Wolverines were, so be it, but I'm more concerned with Sheets resembling Sam McGuffie than anything else.