South Bend, Ind (UHND) - It certainly wasn't pretty out there today, but for the second week in a row the Notre Dame special teams and defense lead the Irish to victory.  Two fumbles returned for touchdowns, one by Gerome Sapp and the other by Linoel Bolen on the ensuing kick off, and an interception return by Vontez Duff for a touchdown in the fourth quarter gave Notre Dame a 24-17 win over interstate rival Purdue in a game where the offense failed to do much of anything.

Notre Dame scored 14 points in less than 15 seconds in the second quarter when the Purdue back slipped, fell, and lost the ball. Safety Gerome Sapp came in and scooped up the loose ball and raced 54 yards for the touchdown making a couple Purdue players miss en route to the touchdown. 

On the ensuing kick off, Linoel Bolen snatched a loose ball out of the air and walked into the end-zone for the second Notre Dame touchdown in seconds.  At that point Notre Dame was up 14-0.  The Irish added another 3 points on Nicholas Setta's 19 yard field goal attempt.  For the day Setta was an uncharacteristic 1-3 with misses from 38 and 42 yards.

Unlike last week, when the offense didn't score a touchdown yet still looked good, this week the offense neither scored a touchdown nor looked good.  Last week Holiday had a career day throwing the ball with over 200 yards, today he was 7 of 22 for a meager 50 yards.  The running game was better this week however gaining 153 yards on 45 attempts.  Ryan Grant looked better gaining 96 yards on 21 attempts, but still was exploding to the hole like he showed last year.  Rashon Powers-Neal looked impressive in the backup role with 43 yards on 7 yards for an average of 6.1 yards.

The offense woes came from a combination of execution and play calling.  The play calling this week was much more like last year than last week.  Simple runs of the middle and holding back from passing in third and longs.  Twice in the 4th quarter with the game tied, a run was called on 3rd and long to play it conservative and attempt a field goal.  The problem was not only were the Irish very short on both plays, they missed the field goals as well. 

Even when passes were called, Holiday looked much worse than last week.  He looked more like a quarterback in the first year of a true passing offense after running the option as opposed to last week when he was calm and collective in the pocket.  This week he had less time to throw and when he had time was short on a lot of passes.  A drop here and there by the receivers also did not help matters.  Holiday also seemed to be looking at only Gary Godsey today.  Godsey had 4 catches and had numerous other balls thrown his way.  In contrast receivers caught only 2 passes for 18 yards (Jenkins and Campbell both had 9 yard receptions).

Overall, the Irish should feel lucky to have come out of this game with a win.  I know a win is a win is a win, but this puts that saying to the test.  It is safe to say that if Notre Dame plays similarly on offense next week they won't be 3-0 at the end of the day.  You can't expect defense and special teams to score 14 points a game (which is what they are averaging this year so far) every week.  The offense needs to get better in a hurry.