In Phil Steele’s college football 2025 preview magazine, he ranks Notre Dame as the No. 2 team in the country as the season is almost here.

Included on that list were two former Notre Dame head coaches, Ty Willingham and Charlie Weis. Both coaches had their struggles while in South Bend, the former more than the latter. The positive news for Fighting Irish fans, however, is that neither coach was on the list for their time with Notre Dame.

Since 2007, they have only squared off nine times and Notre Dame is 9-0 in those contests with their largest margin of victory in the series coming this past season when they traveled to West Lafayette and won in a 66-7 blowout that was over by halftime. Freeman has only coached against Purdue once and is 1-0 against the instate rival.