Not entirely sure what to make over Purdue's convincing 45-17 win over Minnesota.
On one hand ...
The Boilermakers rebounded nicely from a dreadful, dreadful performance a weekend earlier, shaking off a week of mild tumult, if there's such thing, with a thorough beating of a bad-and-wounded opponent.
It spoke to Purdue's resilience that there was no apparent hangover from the Notre Dame undressing, that it took care of business, to use a cliche, and left no doubt. The Boilermakers came out sharp from the get-go and never really let up. Purdue may have won this game without playing well, didn't want to find out.
The offense scored and scored and didn't stop until it hardly mattered anymore. The only things that could stop the offense were a missed field goal of reasonable distance and Ricardo Allen's insistence on scoring himself.
Caleb TerBush was solid at quarterback doing most of the heavy lifting at the position; Robert Marve threw just six passes. Maybe he was changing all the passing plays to handoffs at the line, I don't know, but I doubt it. More likely, Marve didn't throw much because of game conditions. By the time he even set foot on the field, it was already 24-0.
The running game overwhelmed what's just a horrific Minnesota defense.
Purdue ran for 200-plus again, with rookies Akeem Hunt and Raheem Mostert finishing out the game and again looking like kids who are going to be good, good players for the Boilermakers. At this rate, Hunt's going to lead Purdue in rushing this season playing mostly in mop-up duty.
The defense, meanwhile, gave Minnesota nothing but took from it everything, not allowing a touchdown drive until the fourth quarter was half over and generating three turnovers that led directly or indirectly to 14 points.
Purdue only got one sack, but it generated legitimate pressure against an injury-reduced offensive line put together as flimsily as a second-grade art project. That line will see Kawann Short in its dreams tonight. On Short's sack, he threw his blocker into another blocker, taking both out of the play, on his way to the quarterback.
Degree of difficulty was reduced by a robust margin, but Purdue's tackling was much, much better this week, maybe because of the 10 extra minutes per day of practice this week spent on tackling drills, maybe because of this mentality of violence, a oft-referenced descriptor used post-game to describe how Purdue wanted to play. Have to admit, the press conference seemed headed down a PG-13 road when "crimes of passion" came up. That was a first.
For the first time this season, the special teams were deficient, allowing a kickoff return for a touchdown, missing another field goal and not punting up to their previous standards. But it didn't matter, because the other two phases of the game overwhelmed their hopeless opponent so decidedly.
On the other hand ...
Outside of a couple Indiana teams and Illinois' embarrassment of a 1997 team, I'm not sure Purdue's played a worse Big Ten team in the past decade-and-a-half than this one.
Minnesota is better than Southeast Missouri State, but no better than Rice or Middle Tennessee, as its results have shown. The Gophers have lost at home to New Mexico State and North Dakota State and got beat by eight-and-a-half touchdowns last week.
So having seen the difference in competitive level between Purdue's prior three non-conference opponents and Notre Dame, what does this win mean going forward?
There are no more home games this season against opponents like Minnesota. Penn State's iffy this year by its long-standing standards but would rank closer to the Fighting Irish that it would these Gophers.
And, this win is a huge sigh of relief. Purdue loses this one and it's scorched earth time.
Unrest around the program started to boil after what happened last week. With a loss or even a struggle against Minnesota, fans might have stopped caring and the only thing worse than anger among fans is apathy, particularly for a program that played Saturday in a half-capacity stadium.
I keep saying this, but in college football, every weekend can be a season unto itself, as opponents change, dynamics change, the weather changes, and the moods of young people change. Every weekend, a team can look completely different.
Purdue wasn't perfect Saturday - seven penalties and a special teams touchdown allowed attest to that - but it represented itself exponentially better from one week to the next.
But it goes both ways.
After Southeast Missouri, you were warned in this space about false confidence.
Again, beware false confidence.
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