Welcome back, everybody back, everybody, to another episode of the Irish Breakdown podcast brought to you by Fanduel.

Happy Wednesday. We are now midway through game week. And today I'm joined by Sean Davis. Brian, he's getting some work done. He's good. He's just getting a little caught up.

It's been a crazy busy week for us over here at Irish Breakdown, which is always a good thing.

But then the flip side of that coin is we stay busy and we got a lot of content to put out. Brian's been working on a lot of film breakdowns and some things are moving behind the scenes. So today, you get me and my guy, Sean Davis. Today, Sean, we have another good show in store. We're going to start breaking down the Purdue matchup. Yesterday, we talked a lot about what Notre Dame needs to fix and what's at stake for this matchup because at the end of the day, Notre Dame in back-to-back seasons is at a spot where they're in a must-win situation against Purdue. Thankfully, this season, you get them at home, but the flip side of the coin, this Purdue team is a lot better than the one they faced in West Lafayette last year. So in part one of today's show, we are going to talk about the Notre Dame offense versus Purdue's defense. We're going to talk big picture overview of this matchup, where Notre Dame needs to win and some areas where the matchup is a little fuzzy in areas that they need to go out and prove. Part two of today's show, we're going to be talking about the Notre Dame defense versus the Purdue offense, and I know that that is the key area that a lot of people, myself included, probably Sean as well, are going to be really focused in on Saturday. There's going to be a lot of good talking points. When we bring up the Notre Dame defense, we're going to talk about the areas where they match up well, the areas where they have something to prove. And then we are going to do a mailbag at the end of today's show. So make sure as the show goes on, if you want to put in a question, a comment, a concern, put a little MB for mailbag, or you can put in a little mailbox emoji. That lets us know to set that question aside and we'll get to that in the second part of

today's show. But Sean, Notre Dame versus Purdue in-state rivalry to get Notre Dame

season back on track. This is going to be a big one on Saturday, man.

It's funny because we were talking before the show and I think this is very similar to last year.

I don't think anybody expected the fighting Irish to be 0-2 at this point in the season.

At the most, we thought they would split the first two games, which, you know, pitted Notre Dame against two really good, ranked opponents.

And most of us probably thought that first game is probably going to be the one on the road,

first time starter.

Yeah, it's a chance they can lose that one.

Even after that, we came back to South Bend home game against the Aggies,

a team that we went down to Cal Field and defeated last year.

And you felt very confident.

Even after that lost, hey, clean some things up, get better, improved.

You have the buy week to focus on some things.

And Notre Dame would be one in one going against Purdue.

And then from there, the season will continue to ascend on the way to the playoffs.

But now we're in very familiar territory. Unfortunately, with two

losses and zero wins in comparison to the previous year where they were one in one heading

into Purdue. And Purdue is still the perfect remedy for all the ailments for Notre Dame.

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