After Purdue's inexplicable-as-it-was-inexcusable drubbing at Minnesota today, the seat underneath Danny Hope is now aflame.
And that's a really uncomfortable position to be in when you barely have a leg to stand on.
Look, no one is calling for the guillotine here; there's no sense in calling a fight that's clearly headed toward a TKO. But rather we're just pointing out that Purdue is going to have a potentially painful call to make here in the next few weeks, days, maybe hours for all we know.
Hope survived last year's Cuban Missile Crisis after his contract reached the point of no return. But expectations are more often coaches' enemies than their friends.
This season was already marred by losses to every marquee opponent on the schedule, two of those losses being skin-of-your-teeth affairs and two of them not so much.
Now, the season is beyond marred; it's altogether ruined in the context of the Boilermakers being able to do any better than they did last season, which was supposed to be just a step, not a destination. When Purdue loses its next game ? and I might remind you that next week's opponent, Penn State, came into today as maybe the hottest team in the Big Ten ? it will no longer be able to match last year's 6-6 regular season record.
Matching last year, which has to be considered an extreme long shot right now, is not good enough this year, not after your preseason materials touted you as having more returning starters than anyone in the Big Ten; not after the coach declared this his best team at Purdue; not after national pundits, however misguided or simply wrong they might have been, dubbed this group a legitimate contender in a Big Ten season in which the path to Indy had been sprayed down with WD-40.
This team this year ? more so in Big Ten play - has been sloppy and prone to beating itself. Its offense is without identity, with its best game-day quarterback sitting on the bench behind its best practice-field quarterback. And the defense ? your strength, on paper - has come apart at the seams thrice in four games.
And just when things were supposed to get better after a nobly fought moral victory at Ohio State, they got worse at Minnesota, what with the Gophers' freshman quarterback getting christened by a toothless pass rush and a secondary that bit ball fakes like a kitten going at dangled yarn.
In a broader view, one of the absolute musts for Purdue was consistency. If you saw last week's game and you saw this week's, I need not say more. Purdue played unbeaten Ohio State to a standstill for 58 minutes; Saturday, it played Big Ten-winless Minnesota to a standstill for roughly five.
Now, mind you: Not every problem this team has is on the coaching staff. Far from it.
You saw glimpses in the second half Saturday of what might have been.
When Robert Marve, Ralph Bolden and Rob Henry were all out there together in the second half making plays, it had to make you ponder what could have been had that group not been stricken by seven ACLs among them.
But this is a results business, fair or not, and Danny Hope knows that better than anyone.
Purdue mobilized last season in the event it were to make a move; it has begun doing so again behind the scenes this year.
Football has to do two things: Win and make money, not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. It's doing neither.
This is a results business and those are the areas where results are needed. It isn't happening.
People want this to work. Purdue certainly wants this to work. Morgan Burke certainly wants this to work. The interim university president certainly wants this to work and the incoming university president wants this to work. Hope obviously wants this to work.
But right now, it's just not.
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2012. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited. E-mail GoldandBlack.com/Boilers, Inc.
This post was edited on 10/27 8:43 PM by Brian_GoldandBlack.com
This post was edited on 10/27 8:45 PM by Brian_GoldandBlack.com
And that's a really uncomfortable position to be in when you barely have a leg to stand on.
Look, no one is calling for the guillotine here; there's no sense in calling a fight that's clearly headed toward a TKO. But rather we're just pointing out that Purdue is going to have a potentially painful call to make here in the next few weeks, days, maybe hours for all we know.
Hope survived last year's Cuban Missile Crisis after his contract reached the point of no return. But expectations are more often coaches' enemies than their friends.
This season was already marred by losses to every marquee opponent on the schedule, two of those losses being skin-of-your-teeth affairs and two of them not so much.
Now, the season is beyond marred; it's altogether ruined in the context of the Boilermakers being able to do any better than they did last season, which was supposed to be just a step, not a destination. When Purdue loses its next game ? and I might remind you that next week's opponent, Penn State, came into today as maybe the hottest team in the Big Ten ? it will no longer be able to match last year's 6-6 regular season record.
Matching last year, which has to be considered an extreme long shot right now, is not good enough this year, not after your preseason materials touted you as having more returning starters than anyone in the Big Ten; not after the coach declared this his best team at Purdue; not after national pundits, however misguided or simply wrong they might have been, dubbed this group a legitimate contender in a Big Ten season in which the path to Indy had been sprayed down with WD-40.
This team this year ? more so in Big Ten play - has been sloppy and prone to beating itself. Its offense is without identity, with its best game-day quarterback sitting on the bench behind its best practice-field quarterback. And the defense ? your strength, on paper - has come apart at the seams thrice in four games.
And just when things were supposed to get better after a nobly fought moral victory at Ohio State, they got worse at Minnesota, what with the Gophers' freshman quarterback getting christened by a toothless pass rush and a secondary that bit ball fakes like a kitten going at dangled yarn.
In a broader view, one of the absolute musts for Purdue was consistency. If you saw last week's game and you saw this week's, I need not say more. Purdue played unbeaten Ohio State to a standstill for 58 minutes; Saturday, it played Big Ten-winless Minnesota to a standstill for roughly five.
Now, mind you: Not every problem this team has is on the coaching staff. Far from it.
You saw glimpses in the second half Saturday of what might have been.
When Robert Marve, Ralph Bolden and Rob Henry were all out there together in the second half making plays, it had to make you ponder what could have been had that group not been stricken by seven ACLs among them.
But this is a results business, fair or not, and Danny Hope knows that better than anyone.
Purdue mobilized last season in the event it were to make a move; it has begun doing so again behind the scenes this year.
Football has to do two things: Win and make money, not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. It's doing neither.
This is a results business and those are the areas where results are needed. It isn't happening.
People want this to work. Purdue certainly wants this to work. Morgan Burke certainly wants this to work. The interim university president certainly wants this to work and the incoming university president wants this to work. Hope obviously wants this to work.
But right now, it's just not.
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2012. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited. E-mail GoldandBlack.com/Boilers, Inc.
This post was edited on 10/27 8:43 PM by Brian_GoldandBlack.com
This post was edited on 10/27 8:45 PM by Brian_GoldandBlack.com
