Under Danny Hope, Purdue's been good for a surprise a season.
Whether it's been Ohio State in 2009 or Northwestern a year ago, the Boilermakers have shown they can rise up and beat someone they shouldn't in the face of daunting odds.
Unfortunately for this team and this program, there were no surprises whatsoever Saturday night, when Purdue faced its first legitimate opponent of the season and got absolutely handled in most every phase of the game, overwhelmed on both the field and sideline.
Conventional wisdom said a Notre Dame team far better than its 2-2 record coming in might blow out a Purdue team that didn't look as good as its 2-1 record, recorded against far inferior competition than what the Irish had faced so far.
On paper, Notre Dame was going to roll, it was plain to see.
Not only is Notre Dame better - more talented, faster, bigger, stronger - but it also presented an impossible matchup for Purdue.
What Purdue had to do to compete - not win, but just compete - was to generate advantages, a task its coaching staff had an extra week to accomplish.
That was a disaster.
Defensively, Purdue did some different things, but Notre Dame picked it apart like a bunch of gold-helmeted surgeons. The Boilermakers brought pressure on Tommy Rees, but never so much as got close enough to him to see his breath on this frigid evening.
Offensively, the bevy of oddly timed and conceived trick plays thrown at ND were ineffective and almost embarrassing.
On one of them, receiver Justin Siller traded places with QB Robert Marve, lining up to run the option. On third-and-long when Purdue had done nothing in the running game to that point. Third-and-two, OK, great, let 'er rip. But third-and-10?
Later, Siller's quarterback skills might have come in handy when Marve threw a lateral to the perimeter, for a wide receiver to try to throw a long TD. But the play wasn't run for Siller. It was run for Tommie Thomas, an upperclassmen who rarely plays who was asked to come in for one play Saturday night to throw a 27-yard touchdown against Notre Dame on national television in prime time.
Interesting.
But those bizarre calls' significance is dwarfed by everything else that went wrong.
With two weeks to prepare, Purdue still racked up significantly more penalty yardage (118) than it generated rushing yardage (84).
There's just no sugar-coating Purdue's 13 penalties. That can't be excused.
The celebration penalty on Albert Evans that gave the Irish a touchdown was of course BS, but a rule is a rule. Even bad rules are rules. You just wish the human element would take hold and allow a ref to eat a flag when a kid is caught up in a moment like that, with no unsportsmanlike intent whatsoever. But whatever. I haven't seen the replay yet.
Penalties speak to preparation, even if they're silly celebration flags.
Tackling also speaks to preparation, with Saturday's performance sort of bringing to the forefront the minimal full-contact tackling Purdue seems to do in practice, which is not a new issue. Can't fault somebody for trying to prevent injury, but nevertheless, the Boilermakers have not been a particularly good tackling team in years and something needs to change there.
Granted, Notre Dame is hard to tackle. Michael Floyd's big as a moose and just a load to bring down.
Cierre Wood might be the best running back no one talks about for some reason. That kid is a stud. He and Jonas Gray ran at just an entirely different speed than the guys chasing them, it seemed like.
Of course, your job's a little easier when the opponent is getting plowed off the line of scrimmage like a foot of snow off your driveway, but still ...
Other than special teams, Purdue won no phase of this game - not even close - and the numbers belie the true lack of competitiveness here.
Ninety-five of Purdue's 276 yards - nearly 35 percent - and its only touchdown came on its meaningless last drive against the Notre Dame junior varsity. That freshman Akeem Hunt wound up as the Boilermakers' leading rusher off solely that garbage-time drive was fitting.
This was an important game for Purdue from a perception standpoint, as we mentioned often in advance of the game.
No one game makes or breaks a season in college football, where every weekend can be a season unto itself, but this was a game where it really would have benefited Purdue to at least compete as an indication of things moving in the right direction.
This season cannot be a week-to-week referendum on Danny Hope - it doesn't work that way - but at least a respectable performance tonight (err, last night) could have gone a long way in quelling some of the unrest among the program's followers. Now, the angst will percolate anew, with 60 minutes of nationally televised ammunition.
The quarterback issue will be much talked-about this week, with the vote here going to Robert Marve. Caleb TerBush's numbers at the end of the day looked better, aside from the awful interception, but Marve's more dynamic and has more up-side, it would appear. I like TerBush, though. Fans are throwing him on the scrap heap way too quickly, if you ask me.
But who cares about quarterback?
This team's more pressing issue is on defense.
Purdue wasn't all that good - or at least consistently good - last season when it had one of the best players in the whole country.
So what reason did we really have to think it would be any better without Ryan Kerrigan?
Notre Dame did whatever it wanted Saturday night. Purdue's pass-rush - a strength last season with Kerrigan - is now a glaring deficiency.
There were no pleasant surprises for Purdue Saturday evening, but that doesn't mean there can't be the rest of the season. The Boilermakers were riding a six-game losing streak two seasons ago before they beat Ohio State. Last season, they were coming off a loss to Toledo and an ACL injury to its QB when it won at ranked-in-one-poll Northwestern.
So, yeah, there's hope.
But if you're a win-counter - looking at the schedule ahead to pencil in your Ws and Ls - then things might look kind of bleak for you right now, even with the Big Ten's new get-well card, Minnesota, visiting next weekend.
But the way things look on paper isn't always how things turn out in real life.
It's just that on Saturday night, the way things looked on paper was exactly how things turned out in real life.
This post was edited on 10/2 3:08 AM by Brian_GoldandBlack.com
This post was edited on 10/2 11:09 AM by Alan_GoldandBlack.com
This post was edited on 10/2 11:13 AM by Alan_GoldandBlack.com
