Having finished off the non-conference portion of the schedule, Purdue now heads into conference play taking on the 1-3 (1-0) Illinois Illini.
Taking a look at the size and experience of the Illinois Lines and LBs and seeing how they match up against Purdue's equivalents. (Note: A number of teams on this season’s schedule have already factored in the player’s extra year of eligibility. Where possible, I’ve not done so in order to try and get a truer picture of each team’s experience. Thus, my numbers may not always jibe with other sites). Neither Purdue or Illinois have released a 2-deep yet (Purdue’s should come out on Thursday) so I have made some educated guesses as to starters.
- After facing smaller lines in non-conference games, Purdue’s defense will now face a more
“normal” sized O-line, with the Illinois’s O-Line average size coming in at 310.0 lbs. (This is still slightly below average for the B10) This is a very experienced and mature with 3.6 years of experience. Collectively, they have the most career starts of any team in the country with 139. The starting five will have a collective 99. Both tackles are long time starters with 4 starts each to their name. Former starting center Kramer did not start against Maryland and his status for Saturday is questionable. Without him, the interior of the line while older is short on starts (11 total between the 3).
- This week’s Purdue’s projected D-Line (Kalaftkis, Johnson, Dean, Mitchell) averages about 281.3 lbs, down 5.0lbs from last year’s 288.3 lbs due to missing Neal’s mass. That size puts them slightly below average for the B10. They will be outweighed by the Illinois line by about 28.7 lbs per man on average. Purdue’s average experience is 3.25 years, up a half year to last year’s line. As a unit they have 43 collective starts.
- Purdue’s projected LBs (Graham, Alexander, Douglas) come in at 233.3 lbs, up slightly from last year and are at 3.67 years of experience, up from last season due to Douglas starting. Their size puts them in the upper tier of the B10 behind just Rutgers, Wisconsin and PSU. They have a collective 34 starts between them.
- Purdue’s projected O-line (Long, Holstege, Hartwig, Witt, Miller) will average 306.0 lbs per man, up by 5 lbs from last year’s 301.0 lbs. but still one of the smaller units in the B10 ahead of just Northwestern and Iowa. They average 3.00 years of experience, up nearly a half-year from last season’s 2.6 years. Collectively, they have a decent number of starts, in 82. Starting out last season, this group had a mere 36 starts so Purdue should be in much better shape this season.
- Illinois features a 3-4 or arguably a 3-3-5 scheme so we’ve added in their largest OLB (BTW Bielema converted all DEs to OLBs when he took over) to the D-line for comparison sake. At 278.75 lbs, they are scheduled to be one of the smaller of D-lines Purdue will face this season, just above ND and Iowa. Not nearly as experienced as the O-Line counterparts, they come in with just a 2.5 year average and will be outweighed by Purdue’s O-line by 28.25 lbs per man. With one multi-year starter (Carney) and the remaining three players being part time starters, they have just 40 starts between them.
- With the inclusion of a Safety, the Illinois LBs are also a smaller group at 221.7 lbs., just slightly larger than U-Conn’s, which puts them well below average for teams Purdue will face this season. They fall in between the other two units in terms of experience with an even 3.00 years at the position and the collective starts are reasonable at 40 but consider that the MLB (Hansen) has 34 of those. Like UConn, this is a group that is going to sacrifice size for speed and quickness and seems to be built to cover spread teams.
Vegas predicts Purdue by 11.0 points (Opened up at 10.0 points)
MasseyRatings predicts a 30-20 Purdue win
Sagarin predicts a 9.88 point Purdue win
CollegeFootballPoll predicts a 10.05 point Purdue win.
Unlike last week when there was some disagreement in the point spread, as well as the winner, this week the computer models all predict nearly the same outcome.
For those of you who care about recruiting ratings, here are the starter’s Rivals ratings:
Purdue...........................Illinois
QB Plummer 3*..............Peters 4* (Michigan)
RB Dorue 3*…...............Love 4*
WR Wright 4*..................Williams 4* (QB) or Washington 2*
WR Bell 4*.........………..Sandy 3*
WR/TE Sheffield 3*........Ford 4* (Georgia)
TE Durham 3*.................Barker 3*
LT Long 2*.................….Lowe 3*
LG Witt 2*...................... Badovinac
C Hartwig 4*................... Jeresaty 2* (Wofford)
RG Holstege 2*............. Pearl 2*
RT Miller 3*.....................Palczewski 2*
DE Mitchell 3*..................Carney Jr. 4*
DT Johnson 3*………..….Newton 3*
DT Dean 3*…..................Perry NR (South Carolina State)
DE/LB Karlaftis 4*............Coleman 2*
LB Alexander 3*....…....... Hansen 2*
LB Douglas 2* ………...…Barnes 2*
LB/S Graham 3*...………..Joseph 3*
CB Brown *.........……........Nicholson 2* (ATH)
CB Mackey 3*...................Witherspoon NR
FS Allen 3*......………......S. Brown 2* (ATH)
SS Grant 4*..................…Martin 2*
Obviously a disappointing outcome for the Boilers last Saturday in their second of back to back road contests. Regardless of the step up in competition, Purdue like most teams doesn’t fare well in the second road game in a row. Under Brohm, Purdue is 1-1 with the lone win in 2017 at Iowa (after losing to Northwestern the week prior). The loss was against Rutgers, also in 2017. In 2018 and again in 2019, Purdue had two back to back road games but those games were separated by a ‘bye” week so I don’t count them. For the record, Purdue went 1-1 in those games as well. To compare, Tiller’s record was 7-11 in those type games. In 2004 (Illinois, Notre Dame and PSU) and again in 2006 (Notre Dame, Iowa and Northwestern) Purdue played three games in a row on the road without a break. They were 2-0 in those games in 2004 (ND and PSU were having down seasons) and 1-1 in 2006.
Moving on and coming back to the friendly confines of Ross-Ade stadium for the second time this season and facing an Illinois team which has issues of their own.
This is a trophy game with Purdue retaining the (Purdue) Cannon following last year’s 31-24 win at Illinois. Purdue leads the trophy series 39-30-2 while overall, the two teams are tied at 45-45-6.
Illinois finally canceled the Lovie Smith experiment following last season and brought back to the B10 Illinois native, Iowa Alum and former Wisconsin Badger HC, Bret Bielema.
Illinois took full advantage of the NCAA’s granting of an extra year for everyone who played last season and currently has 21 “Super Seniors” on their squad (most in the NCAA) to go along with 20 other Seniors (4th and 5th year),
Bielema’s Illinois squad features a run-heavy offense and a mobile, attacking style defense. Or, at least they do in theory.
Illinois is ranked 90th nationally (Out of 130) in Total Offense and 72nd in Rushing Offense so they are certainly skewed towards the run. In four games they’ve started three different players at the running back position (Epstein, Norwood and Brown) and freshman McCray is their 3rd leading rusher. However, Epstein, Brown and McCray all could be out for Saturday so the Illini will likely start a 4th different player in Reggie Love who this season has 34 attempts for 113 yards (3.3ypc).
When Illinois does pass the ball, they have Michigan transfer, Brandon Peters, behind center. A former 4* recruit, Peters has had limited success both at UM and at Illinois following the transfer. He was also hurt in their opener against Nebraska but returned for last Friday’s game against Maryland and looked “rusty”. For the season Peters is 13 for 30 for 120 yards, 0 TDs and 1 interception. He is slightly more mobile than a statue with 11 carries for -46 yards and Illinois is last in the league in sacks allowed.
If Peters is pulled, Rutgers transfer Artur “Don’t call me Arthur” Sitkowski is the backup. Playing the majority of the Nebraska game as well as the UTSA and Virginia games, Sitkowski is 58 of 102 for 611 yards, 6 TDs and 1 INT. He’s the more mobile of the two with 16 carries for 39 yards.
On the receiving end of Peters/Sitkowski’s passes are a combination of position switches and transfer players. Isaiah Williams, a former highly ranked QB, is their top receiver with 21 receptions for 230 yards (10.95ypc) and a TD. Next up is Donny Navarro, a transfer from Valparaiso, with 9 receptions for 83 yards (9.22ypc). Perhaps the biggest deep threat is Deuce Spann with a 29.25ypc average but on just four receptions. Spann is also a QB conversion.
Defensively, Illinois is last in the league (102nd nationally) in Scoring Defense; 12th in the league in Rush Defense (82nd nationally) and 110th nationally and again, last in the league, in Pass Efficiency Defense. There is talent and experience across the board on that side of the ball but they can’t seem to put everything together and really make a difference so far this season.
Leading the defense and back for his 6th year is MLB Jake Hansen with 274 career tackles to his credit. He leads the team with 7.8 total tackles per game average. Having the MLB as your team leader in tackles is a good thing. However, leading the team in solo tackles is Cornerback, Jovan Witherspoon. That’s probably less than a good thing.
Illinois does have a respectable +0.5 turnover margin, recovering 5 fumbles and 1 interception offset by losing the ball twice with an equal number of interceptions. Speaking of Hansen, he’s known for forcing fumbles and the 5 that Illinois has recovered places them atop the conference and 2nd in the nation in that category.
So, due to injuries, Purdue is likely down their #1 RB, #1 WR and his backup, #1CB plus backups at TE and DT not to mention the starting DT and MLB lost prior the season starting.
The RB and CB backups performed adequately last week against ND. The real key this week is how the WRs are going to respond if Bell can’t go. Fortunately, there is depth and talented depth at that spot, just not experienced talented depth. Wright’s troubles remind me of what Donald Winston went through back in the late 90’s/2000 team when he had difficulty catching (seemingly) simple passes but could still catch the difficult ones. Wright will likely be the #1 target of Plummer on Saturday so perhaps this is his time to shine. Hope so as there should be a number of opportunities. Thompson and Anthrop will get their shots as well. Some of the “youngsters” should have their chance to break out as well.
Defensively, Purdue needs another effort like last Saturday but must clean up the miscues. Essentially two missed tackles accounted for long TDs and the margin of victory last week. But, overall, the effort and aggressiveness of the defense has been a welcome change over the past couple of years.
Statistically, Purdue is roughly middle of the league in Total Offense (7th, 42nd national), Total Defense (8th, 43rd nationally), Scoring Offense (6th, 63rd Offense and Scoring Defense (8th, 83rd nationally).
Where they aren’t middle of the league is in Rushing Offense (14th, 112th nationally) offset by Passing Offense (2nd, 16th nationally). What might be surprising given the above, is that Purdue is also high in the league in Time of Possession (3rd, 10th nationally). The typical mindset is that teams have to be able and run the pass to be on the positive side of TOP. Not so for Purdue.
Dovetailing with those numbers are 3rd Down Conversions (5th, 51st nationally) and 3rd Down Conversion Defense (also 5th, 33rd nationally). Moving the chains and getting your defense off the field will provide that Time of Possession advantage. Currently, Purdue’s converting 43.2% of the time which would be the highest under Brohm and up from 38% last season (They were 41% in 2019, 39% in 2018 and 33% in 2017). Oddly, the conversion rate was higher in 2016 where it ended up at 45%. Before that, you’d have to go back another 10 years when the 2006 squad converted at a 47% rate.
Weather on Saturday projected to be sunny with a high of 70 degrees. By kickoff, temperatures should be in the mid-60’s. An infinitely better prospect than the last time the Illini visited Ross-Ade in the deluge of 2019.
Let’s play football!
Taking a look at the size and experience of the Illinois Lines and LBs and seeing how they match up against Purdue's equivalents. (Note: A number of teams on this season’s schedule have already factored in the player’s extra year of eligibility. Where possible, I’ve not done so in order to try and get a truer picture of each team’s experience. Thus, my numbers may not always jibe with other sites). Neither Purdue or Illinois have released a 2-deep yet (Purdue’s should come out on Thursday) so I have made some educated guesses as to starters.
- After facing smaller lines in non-conference games, Purdue’s defense will now face a more
“normal” sized O-line, with the Illinois’s O-Line average size coming in at 310.0 lbs. (This is still slightly below average for the B10) This is a very experienced and mature with 3.6 years of experience. Collectively, they have the most career starts of any team in the country with 139. The starting five will have a collective 99. Both tackles are long time starters with 4 starts each to their name. Former starting center Kramer did not start against Maryland and his status for Saturday is questionable. Without him, the interior of the line while older is short on starts (11 total between the 3).
- This week’s Purdue’s projected D-Line (Kalaftkis, Johnson, Dean, Mitchell) averages about 281.3 lbs, down 5.0lbs from last year’s 288.3 lbs due to missing Neal’s mass. That size puts them slightly below average for the B10. They will be outweighed by the Illinois line by about 28.7 lbs per man on average. Purdue’s average experience is 3.25 years, up a half year to last year’s line. As a unit they have 43 collective starts.
- Purdue’s projected LBs (Graham, Alexander, Douglas) come in at 233.3 lbs, up slightly from last year and are at 3.67 years of experience, up from last season due to Douglas starting. Their size puts them in the upper tier of the B10 behind just Rutgers, Wisconsin and PSU. They have a collective 34 starts between them.
- Purdue’s projected O-line (Long, Holstege, Hartwig, Witt, Miller) will average 306.0 lbs per man, up by 5 lbs from last year’s 301.0 lbs. but still one of the smaller units in the B10 ahead of just Northwestern and Iowa. They average 3.00 years of experience, up nearly a half-year from last season’s 2.6 years. Collectively, they have a decent number of starts, in 82. Starting out last season, this group had a mere 36 starts so Purdue should be in much better shape this season.
- Illinois features a 3-4 or arguably a 3-3-5 scheme so we’ve added in their largest OLB (BTW Bielema converted all DEs to OLBs when he took over) to the D-line for comparison sake. At 278.75 lbs, they are scheduled to be one of the smaller of D-lines Purdue will face this season, just above ND and Iowa. Not nearly as experienced as the O-Line counterparts, they come in with just a 2.5 year average and will be outweighed by Purdue’s O-line by 28.25 lbs per man. With one multi-year starter (Carney) and the remaining three players being part time starters, they have just 40 starts between them.
- With the inclusion of a Safety, the Illinois LBs are also a smaller group at 221.7 lbs., just slightly larger than U-Conn’s, which puts them well below average for teams Purdue will face this season. They fall in between the other two units in terms of experience with an even 3.00 years at the position and the collective starts are reasonable at 40 but consider that the MLB (Hansen) has 34 of those. Like UConn, this is a group that is going to sacrifice size for speed and quickness and seems to be built to cover spread teams.
Vegas predicts Purdue by 11.0 points (Opened up at 10.0 points)
MasseyRatings predicts a 30-20 Purdue win
Sagarin predicts a 9.88 point Purdue win
CollegeFootballPoll predicts a 10.05 point Purdue win.
Unlike last week when there was some disagreement in the point spread, as well as the winner, this week the computer models all predict nearly the same outcome.
For those of you who care about recruiting ratings, here are the starter’s Rivals ratings:
Purdue...........................Illinois
QB Plummer 3*..............Peters 4* (Michigan)
RB Dorue 3*…...............Love 4*
WR Wright 4*..................Williams 4* (QB) or Washington 2*
WR Bell 4*.........………..Sandy 3*
WR/TE Sheffield 3*........Ford 4* (Georgia)
TE Durham 3*.................Barker 3*
LT Long 2*.................….Lowe 3*
LG Witt 2*...................... Badovinac
C Hartwig 4*................... Jeresaty 2* (Wofford)
RG Holstege 2*............. Pearl 2*
RT Miller 3*.....................Palczewski 2*
DE Mitchell 3*..................Carney Jr. 4*
DT Johnson 3*………..….Newton 3*
DT Dean 3*…..................Perry NR (South Carolina State)
DE/LB Karlaftis 4*............Coleman 2*
LB Alexander 3*....…....... Hansen 2*
LB Douglas 2* ………...…Barnes 2*
LB/S Graham 3*...………..Joseph 3*
CB Brown *.........……........Nicholson 2* (ATH)
CB Mackey 3*...................Witherspoon NR
FS Allen 3*......………......S. Brown 2* (ATH)
SS Grant 4*..................…Martin 2*
Obviously a disappointing outcome for the Boilers last Saturday in their second of back to back road contests. Regardless of the step up in competition, Purdue like most teams doesn’t fare well in the second road game in a row. Under Brohm, Purdue is 1-1 with the lone win in 2017 at Iowa (after losing to Northwestern the week prior). The loss was against Rutgers, also in 2017. In 2018 and again in 2019, Purdue had two back to back road games but those games were separated by a ‘bye” week so I don’t count them. For the record, Purdue went 1-1 in those games as well. To compare, Tiller’s record was 7-11 in those type games. In 2004 (Illinois, Notre Dame and PSU) and again in 2006 (Notre Dame, Iowa and Northwestern) Purdue played three games in a row on the road without a break. They were 2-0 in those games in 2004 (ND and PSU were having down seasons) and 1-1 in 2006.
Moving on and coming back to the friendly confines of Ross-Ade stadium for the second time this season and facing an Illinois team which has issues of their own.
This is a trophy game with Purdue retaining the (Purdue) Cannon following last year’s 31-24 win at Illinois. Purdue leads the trophy series 39-30-2 while overall, the two teams are tied at 45-45-6.
Illinois finally canceled the Lovie Smith experiment following last season and brought back to the B10 Illinois native, Iowa Alum and former Wisconsin Badger HC, Bret Bielema.
Illinois took full advantage of the NCAA’s granting of an extra year for everyone who played last season and currently has 21 “Super Seniors” on their squad (most in the NCAA) to go along with 20 other Seniors (4th and 5th year),
Bielema’s Illinois squad features a run-heavy offense and a mobile, attacking style defense. Or, at least they do in theory.
Illinois is ranked 90th nationally (Out of 130) in Total Offense and 72nd in Rushing Offense so they are certainly skewed towards the run. In four games they’ve started three different players at the running back position (Epstein, Norwood and Brown) and freshman McCray is their 3rd leading rusher. However, Epstein, Brown and McCray all could be out for Saturday so the Illini will likely start a 4th different player in Reggie Love who this season has 34 attempts for 113 yards (3.3ypc).
When Illinois does pass the ball, they have Michigan transfer, Brandon Peters, behind center. A former 4* recruit, Peters has had limited success both at UM and at Illinois following the transfer. He was also hurt in their opener against Nebraska but returned for last Friday’s game against Maryland and looked “rusty”. For the season Peters is 13 for 30 for 120 yards, 0 TDs and 1 interception. He is slightly more mobile than a statue with 11 carries for -46 yards and Illinois is last in the league in sacks allowed.
If Peters is pulled, Rutgers transfer Artur “Don’t call me Arthur” Sitkowski is the backup. Playing the majority of the Nebraska game as well as the UTSA and Virginia games, Sitkowski is 58 of 102 for 611 yards, 6 TDs and 1 INT. He’s the more mobile of the two with 16 carries for 39 yards.
On the receiving end of Peters/Sitkowski’s passes are a combination of position switches and transfer players. Isaiah Williams, a former highly ranked QB, is their top receiver with 21 receptions for 230 yards (10.95ypc) and a TD. Next up is Donny Navarro, a transfer from Valparaiso, with 9 receptions for 83 yards (9.22ypc). Perhaps the biggest deep threat is Deuce Spann with a 29.25ypc average but on just four receptions. Spann is also a QB conversion.
Defensively, Illinois is last in the league (102nd nationally) in Scoring Defense; 12th in the league in Rush Defense (82nd nationally) and 110th nationally and again, last in the league, in Pass Efficiency Defense. There is talent and experience across the board on that side of the ball but they can’t seem to put everything together and really make a difference so far this season.
Leading the defense and back for his 6th year is MLB Jake Hansen with 274 career tackles to his credit. He leads the team with 7.8 total tackles per game average. Having the MLB as your team leader in tackles is a good thing. However, leading the team in solo tackles is Cornerback, Jovan Witherspoon. That’s probably less than a good thing.
Illinois does have a respectable +0.5 turnover margin, recovering 5 fumbles and 1 interception offset by losing the ball twice with an equal number of interceptions. Speaking of Hansen, he’s known for forcing fumbles and the 5 that Illinois has recovered places them atop the conference and 2nd in the nation in that category.
So, due to injuries, Purdue is likely down their #1 RB, #1 WR and his backup, #1CB plus backups at TE and DT not to mention the starting DT and MLB lost prior the season starting.
The RB and CB backups performed adequately last week against ND. The real key this week is how the WRs are going to respond if Bell can’t go. Fortunately, there is depth and talented depth at that spot, just not experienced talented depth. Wright’s troubles remind me of what Donald Winston went through back in the late 90’s/2000 team when he had difficulty catching (seemingly) simple passes but could still catch the difficult ones. Wright will likely be the #1 target of Plummer on Saturday so perhaps this is his time to shine. Hope so as there should be a number of opportunities. Thompson and Anthrop will get their shots as well. Some of the “youngsters” should have their chance to break out as well.
Defensively, Purdue needs another effort like last Saturday but must clean up the miscues. Essentially two missed tackles accounted for long TDs and the margin of victory last week. But, overall, the effort and aggressiveness of the defense has been a welcome change over the past couple of years.
Statistically, Purdue is roughly middle of the league in Total Offense (7th, 42nd national), Total Defense (8th, 43rd nationally), Scoring Offense (6th, 63rd Offense and Scoring Defense (8th, 83rd nationally).
Where they aren’t middle of the league is in Rushing Offense (14th, 112th nationally) offset by Passing Offense (2nd, 16th nationally). What might be surprising given the above, is that Purdue is also high in the league in Time of Possession (3rd, 10th nationally). The typical mindset is that teams have to be able and run the pass to be on the positive side of TOP. Not so for Purdue.
Dovetailing with those numbers are 3rd Down Conversions (5th, 51st nationally) and 3rd Down Conversion Defense (also 5th, 33rd nationally). Moving the chains and getting your defense off the field will provide that Time of Possession advantage. Currently, Purdue’s converting 43.2% of the time which would be the highest under Brohm and up from 38% last season (They were 41% in 2019, 39% in 2018 and 33% in 2017). Oddly, the conversion rate was higher in 2016 where it ended up at 45%. Before that, you’d have to go back another 10 years when the 2006 squad converted at a 47% rate.
Weather on Saturday projected to be sunny with a high of 70 degrees. By kickoff, temperatures should be in the mid-60’s. An infinitely better prospect than the last time the Illini visited Ross-Ade in the deluge of 2019.
Let’s play football!
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