I know literally dozens of people in this forum who will find the bad in every single game Purdue plays and find a way to trash players, coaches, and other fans. In fact they hijack nearly every single thread posted here. It makes these forums difficult to read and makes fans of the team I love difficult to stomach.
Knowing all that and knowing I will be pooped on for trying to stay positive, I am still going to post this for those few out there who are of like mind.
First of all, there is no two ways about the Rutgers game.... it is a game we should have won. That was a bad loss and an embarrassing one for our defense and special teams especially.
Now what can we take positive from things so far.
1. That is really the first game that we lost which we clearly should have won this year. Northwestern is a really good team who is in the drivers seat to win the West still. Minnesota has been up and down this year but I think most would have that pretty close to evenly matched going in.... and except for a horrible call I think we still win that game. And lets face it, almost every NCAA team loses games they should win in a season, otherwise the Ohio St’s of the world would not lose for decades.
2. 13 or 14 of our 22 starters are SO and below.... That is nearly 2/3rds of our starters. I haven’t scoured other schools depth charts but that seems very young. I would think one of the youngest in college football and we have played every game to within a score single score.
3. Pretty sure we only graduate 5 starters on both sides of the ball and only about 3 more in the deeps. We will essentially bring back the same team (minus rondale) a year older and more experienced.
4. Our highest rated recruiting class will be JRs (and RS SO) next year. That class will be dominating our 2 deeps and have 2-3 years as starters ahead of them.
5. The offense is still playing really well. Yes we had 2 questionable series and an incredibly bad timed INT but still mostly positive and for once well balanced run/pass. For the record I agree with everyone exasperated over the qb run call. I understand it seems genius if it works but with our history of bad qb runs I don’t know how we expected it to work.
6. I won’t even try to come up with excuses for defense. We are a bend but don’t break defense that blew coverage on 3 plays allowing TDs. And then we allowed a team to line up and run 90% of their last 4-5 drives right down our throats. It was a horrible, horrible game. However that is imo the first and (fingers crossed) only time we have looked that bad. We will continue to give up yards but hopefully big plays will be cut down.
Finally I will just say that I hope this game doesn’t carry over because it was very demoralizing they way they were able to man handle us for the last 4-5 series. If we keep playing hard we will be in every game. 2 out of 3 and we can still see a bowl.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Boiler Up!
Knowing all that and knowing I will be pooped on for trying to stay positive, I am still going to post this for those few out there who are of like mind.
First of all, there is no two ways about the Rutgers game.... it is a game we should have won. That was a bad loss and an embarrassing one for our defense and special teams especially.
Now what can we take positive from things so far.
1. That is really the first game that we lost which we clearly should have won this year. Northwestern is a really good team who is in the drivers seat to win the West still. Minnesota has been up and down this year but I think most would have that pretty close to evenly matched going in.... and except for a horrible call I think we still win that game. And lets face it, almost every NCAA team loses games they should win in a season, otherwise the Ohio St’s of the world would not lose for decades.
2. 13 or 14 of our 22 starters are SO and below.... That is nearly 2/3rds of our starters. I haven’t scoured other schools depth charts but that seems very young. I would think one of the youngest in college football and we have played every game to within a score single score.
3. Pretty sure we only graduate 5 starters on both sides of the ball and only about 3 more in the deeps. We will essentially bring back the same team (minus rondale) a year older and more experienced.
4. Our highest rated recruiting class will be JRs (and RS SO) next year. That class will be dominating our 2 deeps and have 2-3 years as starters ahead of them.
5. The offense is still playing really well. Yes we had 2 questionable series and an incredibly bad timed INT but still mostly positive and for once well balanced run/pass. For the record I agree with everyone exasperated over the qb run call. I understand it seems genius if it works but with our history of bad qb runs I don’t know how we expected it to work.
6. I won’t even try to come up with excuses for defense. We are a bend but don’t break defense that blew coverage on 3 plays allowing TDs. And then we allowed a team to line up and run 90% of their last 4-5 drives right down our throats. It was a horrible, horrible game. However that is imo the first and (fingers crossed) only time we have looked that bad. We will continue to give up yards but hopefully big plays will be cut down.
Finally I will just say that I hope this game doesn’t carry over because it was very demoralizing they way they were able to man handle us for the last 4-5 series. If we keep playing hard we will be in every game. 2 out of 3 and we can still see a bowl.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Boiler Up!