Taking a look at the size and experience of the Indiana State lines and LBs and seeing how they match up against Purdue's equivalents.
- Purdue’s defense will face an Indiana State O-line which will be massive and the largest of units that Purdue will face this year at 330.0 lbs. This is a full 26.5 lbs per man larger than the average B10 line. They do come in as one of the lesser experienced groups at 3.0 years of experience. Four starters return from last year but of those three moved positions in the offseason with only the LT remaining in the same location. The ISU line will have 69 collective starts as a unit. While large nonetheless, their LG weighs in at 380lbs and obviously brings the average weight up to that reported 330lbs figure. One other item to note is that three of their linemen (C, RG and RT) all weigh exactly the same, 320lbs. Could be a coincidence or could be gamesmanship. Hard to tell until they take the field.
- This year’s Purdue’s D-Line (Panfil, Replogle, Watson, Miles) averages about 267.8 lbs, down about 7lbs from the 275 lbs average from last year. They will be outweighed by the ISU line by about 52.2 lbs per man on average. Purdue’s average experience is 3.00 years, identical to last year’s line when two Seniors started at DE. The size of this group will be below average for a B10 team and also slightly below average in terms of experience. As a unit they are very untested as going into Saturday they have 23 collective starts. When Henley is playing the size and experience level will increase to the point where they would be just slightly below average for a B10 team.
- This season Purdue is listing the Linebackers as a normal three LB set. Purdue’s LBs (Ezechukwu, Bentley, Herman) come in at 245.3 lbs but only 2.33 years of experience. That’s up over 3.0 lbs from last year and the collective experience is the same as the start of last year when Sean Robinson started in the middle. Though young, they have a collective 30 starts between them. Size wise, this group is one of the largest in the B10 but experience wise, they fall on the other side of the ledger and are tied for the youngest in the B10 (Nebraska, Minnesota).
- Purdue’s O-line (Hedelin, King, Kugler, Roos, Cermin) will average 302.0 lbs per man, down by 2.8 lbs from last year’s 304.8 lbs. This places them slightly below average in the B10. They average 3.40 years of experience which is (finally) slightly above average for the B10 where in prior years they have been one of the youngest lines in the B10. Collectively, this group has 86 starts among them. Kugler has the lion’s share (32) of those starts by himself. The start totals also don’t include Hedelin’s while he was a JUCO.
- At 261.3lbs, Indiana State’s D-line will be among the smaller D-Lines Purdue will face this year. They’ve switched from a 4-3 to a 3-4 scheme this season so for the purposes of comparison, we’ve used their largest LB (who just happened to be the starting DE last season) as a DL. They will be slightly above average in terms of experience with a 3.25 year average. They’ll be outweighed by Purdue’s O-line by 30.7lbs per man. They return three starters from last year and have a collective 65 starts between them (nearly 3 times as many as their Purdue counterparts).
- The ISU LBs comes in at a decent size at 230.0 lbs. but are still below average for teams Purdue will face this year. They do have decent experience with an average of 3.00 years at the position. Oddly enough, due to a lot of new LBs on teams that Purdue will face, this is actually above average for the position. Most years it would be below. Together they have 55 starts with two starters returning from last season and another starter returning from 2013, having sat out last season with a knee injury. Again, that’s significantly more, nearly double, than their Purdue counterparts.
Now that some eggs have been broken, this will be an interesting week for Purdue. They’ll have a short week to prepare for a good (Ranked 21st) FCS team that returns a lot of starters from last season. If Purdue comes out flat from Sunday’s loss, ISU is capable of pulling off a win, which would be their first against a B10 team (You’ll recall, Marshall had never beaten a B10 team up until last week either).
Sagarin is predicting a 8.19 point Purdue win
Vegas won’t have a line due to ISU being an FCS team
Compughter Ratings.com predicts a 32-20 Purdue win
CollegeFootballPoll predicts a 29.47 point Purdue win
MasseyRatings predicts a 28-20 Purdue win
CollegeFootballNews predictions won’t come out until later this week
Purdue needs to regroup and regroup fast. Unlike in 1997, Notre Dame isn’t waiting in week two to take the taste out of an opening week loss to a lesser opponent. Instead, it will have an FCS team coming in but it’s a good FCS team, Purdue won’t have a full week to prepare and it’s a team that nearly pulled off the upset two years ago in a similar situation. A loss to ISU and life will be much tougher for the coaching staff. Even a win might not alleviate pressure as, like against Marshall, Purdue is really in a lose-lose proposition with these games. Not until week three, against VaTech, and possibly the week following, against an explosive Bowling Green team will wins get much credit with the fan base.
Moving on from Marshall, Purdue’s offense did a lot of good things but of course was balanced by a lot of bad things. On the good side, there were some long pass plays and while they didn’t hit on all of them (who does?) they did show the capability to complete balls downfield and against good, experienced DBs.
In addition, they converted a fairly high percentage of 3rd down plays coming with 10 out of 22 or 46%. On two of those drives where they didn’t convert, they went for it on 4th down, converting both. Combined (3rd and 4th down conversions), they kept the chains moving 12 out of 22 times or 55%.
While it’s only one game, the 3rd down conversions for the last several years looked like so:
2014 – 36%
2013 – 31%
2012 – 40%
2011 – 41%
2010 – 32%
2009 – 42%
2008 – 39%
2007 – 40%
2006 – 47%
Conversely, the defense only allowed Marshall to convert on 4 of 11 attempts for 36%. For comparison, last season Marshall converted 51% of their 3rd downs. The recent year’s defensive conversion percentages were:
2014 – 46%
2013 – 57%
2012 – 41%
2011 – 41%
2010 – 43%
2009 – 41%
2008 – 36%
2007 – 38%
2006 – 40%
Again, there’s not much to go on from data points but the early returns look somewhat promising in that regard.
Sticking with the defense, they were able to turn Marshall over three times (four if the referees hadn’t ruled a stoppage of play). The last game they forced three or more turnovers was against Nebraska last year (2 Armstrong interceptions and a fumble recovery) and against Illinois (4 total) in 2012 when they got two interceptions and an equal number of fumble recoveries. In other words, it doesn’t happen very often. If they can keep this up in weeks to come, it should bode well for the Boilers.
One more encouraging note was the defense’s ability to hold Marshall’s premier running back, Johnson, in check most of the game. His 89 yards represented a career low in games outside of two games late last season when he was injured and only ran the ball 3 and 5 times respectively. When you consider that 48 of those 89 yards came on a single play, and a play that he ultimately turned the ball over, it represented a positive for a Purdue defense which gave up huge yardage on the ground the last several years.
All in all, it was a difficult offense to defend and Purdue’s defense managed to only give up 27 points. My guess is that at the end of the year, that will be well below Marshall’s average.
But that was last week. ISU’s O-line is massive. Even taking their 380lb guard out of the equation, the next “smallest” player comes in at 310lbs. Wisconsin’s O-lines are typically in the 320lb range and maxed out at 322lbs in 2011. Since I’ve been tracking sizes during the 2006 season, this will be the largest line (on paper at least) that Purdue will have faced (Next largest was Maryland’s line in the 2006 bowl game – 323.4lbs).
The million dollar question then, is they’re big, but are they mobile? If not, then Purdue should be able to shoot some gaps, get penetration and be able to handle ISU’s running attack. If they are mobile, then it’s a good thing Purdue can go 8-10 deep along the D-line as it will be imperative to keep the line fresh as the game goes along.
While they don’t have as many collective starts as does Purdue, they are still fairly experienced in that regard. Again, they have 4 starters back from last season even though 3 of those starters have switched positions.
Without having been able to see any of their games, it’s difficult to comment on their skill players other than their QB. He’s an athletic QB who’s probably as good running the ball as he is passing. Truth be told, he was probably a better Lacrosse player coming out of High School than he was a football prospect and while I didn’t have the opportunity to see him play in High School (he’s from a South Orange County, California HS), I do know the program he came from and they generally play a high level of football (and Lacrosse).
The Purdue defense will need to be disciplined in their rush lanes and not allow him to step up and scramble for big yards. I’d expect ISU to also call a good number of running plays for the QB to take advantage of his talents. If nothing else, it should be good experience prior to playing VaTech, Bowling Green and Nebraska down the line, all who feature a mobile QB.
Purdue was able to contain Marshall’s QB when he ran the ball although he was a much bigger player and ISU’s Adam (not Adams) should present a little more elusive of a target for Purdue to corral.
Compared to Marshall, the ISU defensive line is going to be slightly smaller and slightly younger but will actually have significantly more starts under their belt (65 v 22) going into the game. With ISU using a 3-4 formation and having a tendency to bring pressure, Purdue’s O-line will need to be on top of their game to handle the players who do rush and not allowing players to go unblocked and unimpeded to the QB (which contributed to at least one of last week’s interceptions). I’d expect this should be a good test to see just how much Purdue’s O-line has improved over last season. Let’s hope they pass that test.
However, with Purdue’s experience along their O-line, their ability to open up holes in the run game and ISU’s relative small size along their D-line, you’d expect Purdue to lay in a heavy dose of running, much like they did against Marshall with good success. What I’d like to see differently this week is to stay more in a spread formation instead of bringing in one or more TEs to help block, which in turn, should keep those extra defenders out of the box.
From a risk/reward standpoint, having the extra blockers in the formation probably limits gaining large chunks of yardage on any one play, but probably also limits the chances of getting thrown for a loss on any one play, so while I can at least understand the justification of using the bigger formation, I just don’t agree with the concept and would like to see a little more risk (higher possibility of a TFL) with a corresponding greater reward (larger runs).
Would also like to see Purdue run the ball, even against 8 and 9 men in a box until ISU shows they can stop it, instead of perhaps trying to outthink the defense and call for a passing play in those 3rd and short plays.
Like Marshall, Indiana State’s defense is a bit undersized but should compensate by being quick, thus I think you’ll want to see Purdue not try and run any slow developing plays but instead just quick hitters up the gut. Also look for Purdue to try and get the ball to the outside either via the run (jet sweep, option) or the pass (bubble screen).
Bottom line for this game is that Purdue cannot take ISU lightly. Parity is such in college football that FCS teams can compete, and win, against FBS teams (ask Washington State) week in and week out. No longer can a team like Purdue simply take the field and expect to win against these teams, especially one that is as good and is physically the equal to any B10 team.
A win, and some of those cracked eggs get made into a nice Western Omelet. A loss….I don’t even want to contemplate a loss.
Saturday can’t get here soon enough!
- Purdue’s defense will face an Indiana State O-line which will be massive and the largest of units that Purdue will face this year at 330.0 lbs. This is a full 26.5 lbs per man larger than the average B10 line. They do come in as one of the lesser experienced groups at 3.0 years of experience. Four starters return from last year but of those three moved positions in the offseason with only the LT remaining in the same location. The ISU line will have 69 collective starts as a unit. While large nonetheless, their LG weighs in at 380lbs and obviously brings the average weight up to that reported 330lbs figure. One other item to note is that three of their linemen (C, RG and RT) all weigh exactly the same, 320lbs. Could be a coincidence or could be gamesmanship. Hard to tell until they take the field.
- This year’s Purdue’s D-Line (Panfil, Replogle, Watson, Miles) averages about 267.8 lbs, down about 7lbs from the 275 lbs average from last year. They will be outweighed by the ISU line by about 52.2 lbs per man on average. Purdue’s average experience is 3.00 years, identical to last year’s line when two Seniors started at DE. The size of this group will be below average for a B10 team and also slightly below average in terms of experience. As a unit they are very untested as going into Saturday they have 23 collective starts. When Henley is playing the size and experience level will increase to the point where they would be just slightly below average for a B10 team.
- This season Purdue is listing the Linebackers as a normal three LB set. Purdue’s LBs (Ezechukwu, Bentley, Herman) come in at 245.3 lbs but only 2.33 years of experience. That’s up over 3.0 lbs from last year and the collective experience is the same as the start of last year when Sean Robinson started in the middle. Though young, they have a collective 30 starts between them. Size wise, this group is one of the largest in the B10 but experience wise, they fall on the other side of the ledger and are tied for the youngest in the B10 (Nebraska, Minnesota).
- Purdue’s O-line (Hedelin, King, Kugler, Roos, Cermin) will average 302.0 lbs per man, down by 2.8 lbs from last year’s 304.8 lbs. This places them slightly below average in the B10. They average 3.40 years of experience which is (finally) slightly above average for the B10 where in prior years they have been one of the youngest lines in the B10. Collectively, this group has 86 starts among them. Kugler has the lion’s share (32) of those starts by himself. The start totals also don’t include Hedelin’s while he was a JUCO.
- At 261.3lbs, Indiana State’s D-line will be among the smaller D-Lines Purdue will face this year. They’ve switched from a 4-3 to a 3-4 scheme this season so for the purposes of comparison, we’ve used their largest LB (who just happened to be the starting DE last season) as a DL. They will be slightly above average in terms of experience with a 3.25 year average. They’ll be outweighed by Purdue’s O-line by 30.7lbs per man. They return three starters from last year and have a collective 65 starts between them (nearly 3 times as many as their Purdue counterparts).
- The ISU LBs comes in at a decent size at 230.0 lbs. but are still below average for teams Purdue will face this year. They do have decent experience with an average of 3.00 years at the position. Oddly enough, due to a lot of new LBs on teams that Purdue will face, this is actually above average for the position. Most years it would be below. Together they have 55 starts with two starters returning from last season and another starter returning from 2013, having sat out last season with a knee injury. Again, that’s significantly more, nearly double, than their Purdue counterparts.
Now that some eggs have been broken, this will be an interesting week for Purdue. They’ll have a short week to prepare for a good (Ranked 21st) FCS team that returns a lot of starters from last season. If Purdue comes out flat from Sunday’s loss, ISU is capable of pulling off a win, which would be their first against a B10 team (You’ll recall, Marshall had never beaten a B10 team up until last week either).
Sagarin is predicting a 8.19 point Purdue win
Vegas won’t have a line due to ISU being an FCS team
Compughter Ratings.com predicts a 32-20 Purdue win
CollegeFootballPoll predicts a 29.47 point Purdue win
MasseyRatings predicts a 28-20 Purdue win
CollegeFootballNews predictions won’t come out until later this week
Purdue needs to regroup and regroup fast. Unlike in 1997, Notre Dame isn’t waiting in week two to take the taste out of an opening week loss to a lesser opponent. Instead, it will have an FCS team coming in but it’s a good FCS team, Purdue won’t have a full week to prepare and it’s a team that nearly pulled off the upset two years ago in a similar situation. A loss to ISU and life will be much tougher for the coaching staff. Even a win might not alleviate pressure as, like against Marshall, Purdue is really in a lose-lose proposition with these games. Not until week three, against VaTech, and possibly the week following, against an explosive Bowling Green team will wins get much credit with the fan base.
Moving on from Marshall, Purdue’s offense did a lot of good things but of course was balanced by a lot of bad things. On the good side, there were some long pass plays and while they didn’t hit on all of them (who does?) they did show the capability to complete balls downfield and against good, experienced DBs.
In addition, they converted a fairly high percentage of 3rd down plays coming with 10 out of 22 or 46%. On two of those drives where they didn’t convert, they went for it on 4th down, converting both. Combined (3rd and 4th down conversions), they kept the chains moving 12 out of 22 times or 55%.
While it’s only one game, the 3rd down conversions for the last several years looked like so:
2014 – 36%
2013 – 31%
2012 – 40%
2011 – 41%
2010 – 32%
2009 – 42%
2008 – 39%
2007 – 40%
2006 – 47%
Conversely, the defense only allowed Marshall to convert on 4 of 11 attempts for 36%. For comparison, last season Marshall converted 51% of their 3rd downs. The recent year’s defensive conversion percentages were:
2014 – 46%
2013 – 57%
2012 – 41%
2011 – 41%
2010 – 43%
2009 – 41%
2008 – 36%
2007 – 38%
2006 – 40%
Again, there’s not much to go on from data points but the early returns look somewhat promising in that regard.
Sticking with the defense, they were able to turn Marshall over three times (four if the referees hadn’t ruled a stoppage of play). The last game they forced three or more turnovers was against Nebraska last year (2 Armstrong interceptions and a fumble recovery) and against Illinois (4 total) in 2012 when they got two interceptions and an equal number of fumble recoveries. In other words, it doesn’t happen very often. If they can keep this up in weeks to come, it should bode well for the Boilers.
One more encouraging note was the defense’s ability to hold Marshall’s premier running back, Johnson, in check most of the game. His 89 yards represented a career low in games outside of two games late last season when he was injured and only ran the ball 3 and 5 times respectively. When you consider that 48 of those 89 yards came on a single play, and a play that he ultimately turned the ball over, it represented a positive for a Purdue defense which gave up huge yardage on the ground the last several years.
All in all, it was a difficult offense to defend and Purdue’s defense managed to only give up 27 points. My guess is that at the end of the year, that will be well below Marshall’s average.
But that was last week. ISU’s O-line is massive. Even taking their 380lb guard out of the equation, the next “smallest” player comes in at 310lbs. Wisconsin’s O-lines are typically in the 320lb range and maxed out at 322lbs in 2011. Since I’ve been tracking sizes during the 2006 season, this will be the largest line (on paper at least) that Purdue will have faced (Next largest was Maryland’s line in the 2006 bowl game – 323.4lbs).
The million dollar question then, is they’re big, but are they mobile? If not, then Purdue should be able to shoot some gaps, get penetration and be able to handle ISU’s running attack. If they are mobile, then it’s a good thing Purdue can go 8-10 deep along the D-line as it will be imperative to keep the line fresh as the game goes along.
While they don’t have as many collective starts as does Purdue, they are still fairly experienced in that regard. Again, they have 4 starters back from last season even though 3 of those starters have switched positions.
Without having been able to see any of their games, it’s difficult to comment on their skill players other than their QB. He’s an athletic QB who’s probably as good running the ball as he is passing. Truth be told, he was probably a better Lacrosse player coming out of High School than he was a football prospect and while I didn’t have the opportunity to see him play in High School (he’s from a South Orange County, California HS), I do know the program he came from and they generally play a high level of football (and Lacrosse).
The Purdue defense will need to be disciplined in their rush lanes and not allow him to step up and scramble for big yards. I’d expect ISU to also call a good number of running plays for the QB to take advantage of his talents. If nothing else, it should be good experience prior to playing VaTech, Bowling Green and Nebraska down the line, all who feature a mobile QB.
Purdue was able to contain Marshall’s QB when he ran the ball although he was a much bigger player and ISU’s Adam (not Adams) should present a little more elusive of a target for Purdue to corral.
Compared to Marshall, the ISU defensive line is going to be slightly smaller and slightly younger but will actually have significantly more starts under their belt (65 v 22) going into the game. With ISU using a 3-4 formation and having a tendency to bring pressure, Purdue’s O-line will need to be on top of their game to handle the players who do rush and not allowing players to go unblocked and unimpeded to the QB (which contributed to at least one of last week’s interceptions). I’d expect this should be a good test to see just how much Purdue’s O-line has improved over last season. Let’s hope they pass that test.
However, with Purdue’s experience along their O-line, their ability to open up holes in the run game and ISU’s relative small size along their D-line, you’d expect Purdue to lay in a heavy dose of running, much like they did against Marshall with good success. What I’d like to see differently this week is to stay more in a spread formation instead of bringing in one or more TEs to help block, which in turn, should keep those extra defenders out of the box.
From a risk/reward standpoint, having the extra blockers in the formation probably limits gaining large chunks of yardage on any one play, but probably also limits the chances of getting thrown for a loss on any one play, so while I can at least understand the justification of using the bigger formation, I just don’t agree with the concept and would like to see a little more risk (higher possibility of a TFL) with a corresponding greater reward (larger runs).
Would also like to see Purdue run the ball, even against 8 and 9 men in a box until ISU shows they can stop it, instead of perhaps trying to outthink the defense and call for a passing play in those 3rd and short plays.
Like Marshall, Indiana State’s defense is a bit undersized but should compensate by being quick, thus I think you’ll want to see Purdue not try and run any slow developing plays but instead just quick hitters up the gut. Also look for Purdue to try and get the ball to the outside either via the run (jet sweep, option) or the pass (bubble screen).
Bottom line for this game is that Purdue cannot take ISU lightly. Parity is such in college football that FCS teams can compete, and win, against FBS teams (ask Washington State) week in and week out. No longer can a team like Purdue simply take the field and expect to win against these teams, especially one that is as good and is physically the equal to any B10 team.
A win, and some of those cracked eggs get made into a nice Western Omelet. A loss….I don’t even want to contemplate a loss.
Saturday can’t get here soon enough!
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