Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM SEPT. 20, 2025 9 UNDER THE DOME Boilermakers Are Bottom Of The Barrel By Tyler Horka Spare me Purdue's 2-0 re- cord through Week 2. You can't do anything against Ball State and Southern Illinois to impress me. Reality is, this is a Purdue team that went 1-11 last season. All of those 11 losses came consecutively after a season-opening win against … Indiana State, another nobody in the world of college football. That Purdue team had a veteran quarterback in Hudson Card for most of the season. Just watch Notre Dame's 66-7 thrashing of the Boilermakers last September and you'll know it wasn't Card's fault for how bad the team was, even if he was trying to do a little too much at the end of the first half of that blowout. This Purdue team has Card's backup from last season as its starter. Its best offensive player, tight end Max Klare, transferred to Ohio State. Its best defensive player, safety Dillon Thieneman, went to Oregon. Tell me, exactly, what is there to like about Purdue in 2025? Not a whole lot. If anything, it's having a head coach who's been there, done that in Barry Odom at the helm. But even he'll find out soon enough just how much he has on his plate in turning this program around. A lot. And we're not talking filet mignon. We're talking heaps of Spam mixed with anchovies and anything else unappetizing you can think of caked up in mass quantity for Odom to try to parse through. Point being, Purdue was historically bad last year. And the Boilermakers can't be that much bet- ter this year. Stanford Is Finding New Depths Of Awful By Tyler James The task at hand for Stanford general man- ager Andrew Luck might be harder than any hit he took during his playing career with the Cardinal. Luck, who retired from the NFL in 2019, landed a job in the fast- expanding role across college football in late November. His job became much more dif- ficult in March when Stanford opted to fire head coach Troy Taylor amid investigations of hostile and aggressive behavior toward fellow employees. Stanford hired former NFL head coach Frank Reich with an interim head coach title before March ended. That's a title typically reserved for coaches taking over in the middle of a season, so the Cardinal still has plenty to sort out once the season ends. Stanford, which finished last season 3-9, might want the 2025 season to be over sooner rather than later. The Cardinal opened with a pair of losses at Hawai'i and BYU, and it did so with two terrible offensive performances. The Cardinal ranked near the bottom of the FBS (134 teams) in team passing efficiency (No. 133 with 75.94) and total offense (No. 130 with 223.5 yards per game) through two games. The loss at BYU included a safety on a Stanford pass completed and tackled for a loss in its own end zone. Talk about a program going backward. Maybe Luck and Reich can find some answers for the team's ineptitude by the end of the season. But if it continues to be this ugly, the Cardinal might not have much fight left by the time Notre Dame visits for Thanksgiving break. Point ✦ Counterpoint: WHICH IS THE WORST TEAM ON NOTRE DAME'S 2025 SCHEDULE? Defensive backs coach Mike Mickens has argu- ably become Notre Dame's most important posi- tion coach with his track record of producing NFL Draft picks for the Irish — Benjamin Morrison in the second round of the 2025 draft and Cam Hart in the fifth round of the 2024 draft — and recruiting players who can play right away as freshmen, such as Morrison in 2022 and Leonard Moore in 2024. Both Morrison and Moore were named Fresh- man All-Americans by the FWAA in their respec- tive freshman years. Rivals tabbed Morrison and Moore as four-star recruits in high school, but they were not ranked among the top 25 corner- backs in their respective recruiting classes. Blue & Gold Illustrated and other local media recently caught up with Mickens to ask about his Hall of Fame honor at his alma mater Cincinnati and his recruiting evaluation process. BGI: How did you learn that you were going to be inducted to the University of Cincinnati Athlet- ics Hall of Fame? Mickens: "I found out in the summertime. John Cunningham, Cincinnati's athletics director, gave me a call and said I was going in. It's a great honor. It's humbling. Always when you get that achievement, it's humbling to see, and it's great to be able to have it happen." BGI: Why did you get into coaching after your playing career? Mickens: "When I got done playing, I kept find- ing myself at pee-wee games. I didn't have any ties or attachment to them. I just wanted to be around football. My wife was like, 'If you're going to be around football like this, you better get paid for it.' So, I got into coaching. "To be able to do it is just rewarding. It's the best thing after playing." BGI: What's the key to becoming a good talent evaluator? Mickens: "It starts with mentality. Especially at the defensive back position, you've got to be competitive. So, I look at that first, how they are and do they waver when adversity hits? We want guys that don't waver and continue to go compete. I like to say that's like-minded people like me. So, do that. And then speed and all the length and ball skills is the physical part of it." BGI: What do you remember about going to see Leonard Moore as a recruit at Round Rock (Texas) High? Mickens: "He had a spring practice when I went down. I got to see him practice. I knew he was going to be pretty good at that practice. Just the way he moves and everything. Then I also got to see him live in the season as well as a gamer." BGI: Is a practice or a game more valuable when trying to evaluate competitiveness in recruit? Mickens: "In live situations, whether it's com- peting in practice in a one-on-one situation or a camp situation or in a game, you're going to get both. The person is going to be who the person is going to be on the field no matter what. So, that's the great thing about it." — Tyler James Five Questions With … DEFENSIVE BACKS COACH MIKE MICKENS Mickens, who will be inducted into the University of Cincinnati's Athletics Hall of Fame in October, might be Notre Dame's most valu- able position coach. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER