Sorry this week’s edition is late. I’ve been waiting to get bailed out of a Chinese jail.
Taking a look at the size and experience of the Northwestern Lines and LBs and seeing how they match up against Purdue's equivalents.
- Purdue’s defense will face an Northwestern O-line which will be the smallest unit that Purdue will face this year at 295.2 lbs. which is well below average for B10 teams. In fact, they are the smallest B10 line by 5.0 pounds per man. As mentioned in previous weeks, the O-lines for this year’s B10 and OOC opponents are much younger than in years past. Northwestern comes in slightly above average at 2.8 years of experience. Only the right tackle (Slater) is a 1st year starter. The remaining four starters all have multiple years of starting experience. Combined, they have an excellent 102 collective starts which is considerable especially considering their youth.
- This year’s Purdue’s D-Line (Larkin, Robinson, Neal, Ezechukwu) averages about 277.5 lbs, down from the 283.5 lbs average of last year. They will be outweighed by the Northwestern line by only about 17.7 lbs per man on average. Purdue’s average experience is 3.5 years, up from last year’s line of 3.2 year average. The size of this group will be slightly below average for a B10 team but above average in terms of experience. As a unit however they have good starting experience as going into Saturday they have 84 collective starts.
- Purdue’s LBs (McCollum, Bentley, Bailey) come in at 243.3 lbs and are at 3.33 years of experience. That’s up about 1.5 lbs from last year and an additional year in collective experience (Up from 2.33 the last two years). They have a collective 85 starts between them (Counting McCollum’s starts at WKU). Size wise, this group is the largest in the B10 by 10+/- lbs per man and above average in terms of experience. I’ve factored in McCollum here as he is still listed as the starter on the 2-deeps. Should Hudson or Barnes start in his place, the average size increases slightly, years of experience doesn’t change with Hudson but drops down if it’s Barnes. With either replacement player, the number of starts would drop off dramatically as Hudson has just 3 and Barnes 2.
- Purdue’s O-line (Swingler, Evans, Baron, McCann, Steinmetz) will average 309.0 lbs per man, down by less than three Quarter Pounder with Cheese’s from last year’s 309.6 lbs. This puts them slightly above average compared to other B10 programs.They average 3.00 years of experience which is a significant drop from last year (3.6 years). However, this also places them well above average for the B10 and also for all opponents.Collectively, this group has 94 starts among them. Mendez is also in the mix but I’ll leave him out of the calculations until he either starts or is listed as the starter.
- At 286.5 lbs, Northwestern’s D-line is the one of the larger D-Line units Purdue will face this year and falling between Michigan and Wisconsin’s, size wise. They will be well below average in terms of experience with a 2.50 year average. Both tackles are muti-year starters while both ends are in their first year of starting. They’ll be outweighed by Purdue’s O-line by 24.5 lbs per man. As mentioned, they have a mix of new starters but have a good collective 73 starts between them.
- The Wildcat LBs come also in above the average for Purdue’s opponents at 232.0 lbs. and will be one of the larger group they’ll face this season, pretty much equal to Minnesota’s. They are below average in terms of experience with 2.67 years at the position. Their MLB is a first year starter while the OLBs are in their second year. Together they have 44 starts.
Vegas predicts Northwestern by 4.0 points (opened at -6)
Compughter Ratings.com predicts a 20-17 Northwestern win
MasseyRatings predicts a 24-17 Northwestern win
Sagarin predicts an 4.48 point Northwestern win
CollegeFootballPoll predicts a 14.25 point Northwestern win
Last week Purdue did what it was supposed to do and handle a young Illinois team, beating the spread in the process. Still, that win was bittersweet for two reasons.
The first, of course, is the season ending injury to David Blough who had just established himself as the starter at QB after sharing those duties for 2/3 of the season.
The second is, now that Purdue’s record stands at 4-5, those losses to Rutgers and Nebraska by a total of 3 points loom even larger as Purdue tries to win two of its last three games to make a bowl.
Purdue continues to come out and compete which is a testament to the coaching staff getting them motivated game in and game out. I’m confident that as long as that motivation remains, the team will win more often than not.
While Purdue gets to play another team from the state of Illinois, Northwestern will pose more problems than did Illinois.
Northwestern has been relatively stingy on defense, ranking 54th nationally (10th in conference) in Total Defense including 12th in Rush Defense (4th in conference). They do drop down a bit in Team Pass Efficiency Defense where they are 58th (10th in conference) and 112th (14th in conference) in Passing Yards Allowed.
The numbers seem to indicate that teams, finding they can’t run against Northwestern, would then turn to the pass which accounts for the large amount of passing yards allowed. However, Northwestern only ranks 70th (8th in conference) in Sacks.
With Sindelar starting, it stands to reason that Purdue won’t have him run as much as they did with Blough due to Sindelar probably being not as capable a runner as Blough and Purdue won’t want to risk Sindelar also suffering an injury. Of course, Northwestern will not expect Sindelar to run either, so my guess is that there will be enough opportunities for Sindelar to run the ball just to keep Northwestern honest.
Against, Illinois, Purdue shook up their receiving corps to get some “new” starters on the field. I especially liked getting Burgess some snaps as with his size and speed, he was being underutilized as just a special teams player. Still, he has to show he can catch the ball and that’s probably still a bit of a work in progress. Trying to jam a pass in on a short crossing pattern on 3rd down isn’t probably the best opportunity (and it showed). Getting him into a fly pattern down the alley is going to be a better situation (and, it too showed). Again, with his size and speed, he’ll be tough for DBs to jam at the line of scrimmage. I’d like to think Purdue will go back to this starting lineup, especially with Sindelar getting the start.
While Sparks provides some added athleticism at the wide receiver position, Purdue may be better served to work him in at QB more than what its shown up to now. Flip flopping Blough and Sindelar didn’t really make a difference to opposing defenses as they were largely the same type of QB with similar skill sets. Not so with Sparks. Defenses will have to adjust to a heavy dose of the Wildcat (probably should have a different name for that, especially considering this week’s opponent) with the threat of a pass. Of course, that will necessitate dedicating more practice time towards stopping that formation.
Recently Purdue’s been fairly successful in establishing the run game with the trio of Knox, Jones and Worship (not necessarily in that order). Given some of the issues with Purdue’s O-line, I can’t see them abandoning the run game, even given Northwestern’s penchant for stopping opponents on the ground. Purdue will need to get creative in how it runs or find different ways to get their running backs the ball out in space.
Northwestern is coming off a FBS record third consecutive overtime win. In two of those three games, Northwestern gave up leads late which led to overtime. Last week, against Nebraska, it was Northwestern who scored late in the game to force overtime.
Regardless of how they got there, they still won the games which typically points to coaching and teams knowing how to finish (something that’s escaped Purdue on a couple of occasions).
Overall, Northwestern’s offense has been somewhat of an anomaly this season. Returning a veteran QB, Running Back and Offensive Line, the preseason thought was that Northwestern would be able to move the ball and some pundits predicted Northwestern as a dark horse for the Division Champ.
As it’s turned out, the offensive line has underperformed (although it’s been better lately) and in turn, their top running back (Justin Jackson) has also underperformed (not coincidently, he’s also been better lately). In addition, their Quarterback, Clayton Thorson, has not been consistent. When he’s been good, he’s been very good. When he’s been bad, he’s been very bad. He’s still averaging 254 yards per game and a 119.40 efficiency rating but he’s thrown 11 interceptions to just 10 touchdowns. In fact, he’s thrown an interception in 6 of their 9 games and has thrown two interceptions in 5 of their 9 games. As a team, Northwestern is ranked 91st nationally in Turnover Margin (10th in conference).
Thorson was always known as a capable runner. As a freshman, he averaged 7.5 yards per game but jumped up to 30.5 yards per game as a Sophomore. This season, however, he’s only averaging 2.2 yards per game on 71 attempts. As a team, Northwestern has given up 2.67 sacks per game which ranks 100th nationally (10th in conference). These sacks are contributing to Thorson’s rushing yardage as he’s gained 202 yards on the season but lost 182 yards.
The question then remains as to why Thorson is taking that many sacks. Given some of the issues with the O-line, that could be a key factor but, given Thorson’s running ability, it may be that he’s been instructed not to run. That could be due to the lack of a capable backup behind him or that Northwestern wants to use Thorson in more of a drop back role. Either way, teams are getting to him.
For the most part, Purdue’s does a good job shutting down other team’s running games. If they can be successful in doing so again this week, there should be some opportunities for Purdue to bring pressure and either sack Thorson or force him into a mistake, and an interception.
Getting Northwestern to turn the ball over (and for Purdue not to) could be the key on Saturday. Purdue is bound to get some breaks sooner or later so being able for their offense to start on a short field following a turnover would be a great help.
The health of Purdue’s defense, specifically McCollum and Hunte, are going to be critical for Purdue to have a chance at beating Northwestern. I believe both were pretty close to going last week against Illinois but were held out, then I’d like to think they will be ready on Saturday.
The forecast for Saturday looks to be mostly dry but cold and winds up to 13mph. If the game goes late or to overtime, rain is expected. Not the best of conditions for throwing the ball but Sindelar’s arm strength shouldn’t be an issue so it may provide a bit of an advantage for the Boilers.
Northwestern’s not known for a having a huge home field advantage to start with and when you factor in the late game, the cold weather and the threat of freezing rain, it would stand to reason that the crowd shouldn’t be a factor. Again, it could amount to somewhat of an advantage for Purdue.
Based on Northwestern’s success in overtime as of late, it would best for Purdue to try and win the game in regulation. It’s hard to argue with Northwestern coming in with a great deal of confidence if it does go to overtime just based on how the last three weeks have played out for the Wildcats. Still, the laws of averages would also suggest that their record setting three game streak of OT wins can’t go much further.
By nearly all pre-season expectations, this season has already been a success for Purdue with four wins against FBS opponents and still 1/3 of the season left to go. To hit that next level of accomplishments (e.g. a bowl game) Purdue will find it necessary to “reinvent” themselves once again offensively and cross their fingers that the defense can stay healthy the rest of the season.
It will be no small task but so far this season, Coach Brohm has shown that this team has the ability to perform beyond the point where most fans thought they were capable. Losing a team leader like they had in Blough typically has one of two effects; either the team rallies behind the loss and exceeds expectations, or; the team tends to just play out the season, or worse, folds completely.
Having seen this coaching staff in action, I tend to think it could be the former and definitely not the latter scenario we’ll see get played out.
It won’t be easy and Coach Brohm and Coach Holt (and his “evil twin”, Skip Holtz) will need to be on the top of their respective games, but, it’s doable.
Saturday can’t get here soon enough. Let’s play football!
Taking a look at the size and experience of the Northwestern Lines and LBs and seeing how they match up against Purdue's equivalents.
- Purdue’s defense will face an Northwestern O-line which will be the smallest unit that Purdue will face this year at 295.2 lbs. which is well below average for B10 teams. In fact, they are the smallest B10 line by 5.0 pounds per man. As mentioned in previous weeks, the O-lines for this year’s B10 and OOC opponents are much younger than in years past. Northwestern comes in slightly above average at 2.8 years of experience. Only the right tackle (Slater) is a 1st year starter. The remaining four starters all have multiple years of starting experience. Combined, they have an excellent 102 collective starts which is considerable especially considering their youth.
- This year’s Purdue’s D-Line (Larkin, Robinson, Neal, Ezechukwu) averages about 277.5 lbs, down from the 283.5 lbs average of last year. They will be outweighed by the Northwestern line by only about 17.7 lbs per man on average. Purdue’s average experience is 3.5 years, up from last year’s line of 3.2 year average. The size of this group will be slightly below average for a B10 team but above average in terms of experience. As a unit however they have good starting experience as going into Saturday they have 84 collective starts.
- Purdue’s LBs (McCollum, Bentley, Bailey) come in at 243.3 lbs and are at 3.33 years of experience. That’s up about 1.5 lbs from last year and an additional year in collective experience (Up from 2.33 the last two years). They have a collective 85 starts between them (Counting McCollum’s starts at WKU). Size wise, this group is the largest in the B10 by 10+/- lbs per man and above average in terms of experience. I’ve factored in McCollum here as he is still listed as the starter on the 2-deeps. Should Hudson or Barnes start in his place, the average size increases slightly, years of experience doesn’t change with Hudson but drops down if it’s Barnes. With either replacement player, the number of starts would drop off dramatically as Hudson has just 3 and Barnes 2.
- Purdue’s O-line (Swingler, Evans, Baron, McCann, Steinmetz) will average 309.0 lbs per man, down by less than three Quarter Pounder with Cheese’s from last year’s 309.6 lbs. This puts them slightly above average compared to other B10 programs.They average 3.00 years of experience which is a significant drop from last year (3.6 years). However, this also places them well above average for the B10 and also for all opponents.Collectively, this group has 94 starts among them. Mendez is also in the mix but I’ll leave him out of the calculations until he either starts or is listed as the starter.
- At 286.5 lbs, Northwestern’s D-line is the one of the larger D-Line units Purdue will face this year and falling between Michigan and Wisconsin’s, size wise. They will be well below average in terms of experience with a 2.50 year average. Both tackles are muti-year starters while both ends are in their first year of starting. They’ll be outweighed by Purdue’s O-line by 24.5 lbs per man. As mentioned, they have a mix of new starters but have a good collective 73 starts between them.
- The Wildcat LBs come also in above the average for Purdue’s opponents at 232.0 lbs. and will be one of the larger group they’ll face this season, pretty much equal to Minnesota’s. They are below average in terms of experience with 2.67 years at the position. Their MLB is a first year starter while the OLBs are in their second year. Together they have 44 starts.
Vegas predicts Northwestern by 4.0 points (opened at -6)
Compughter Ratings.com predicts a 20-17 Northwestern win
MasseyRatings predicts a 24-17 Northwestern win
Sagarin predicts an 4.48 point Northwestern win
CollegeFootballPoll predicts a 14.25 point Northwestern win
Last week Purdue did what it was supposed to do and handle a young Illinois team, beating the spread in the process. Still, that win was bittersweet for two reasons.
The first, of course, is the season ending injury to David Blough who had just established himself as the starter at QB after sharing those duties for 2/3 of the season.
The second is, now that Purdue’s record stands at 4-5, those losses to Rutgers and Nebraska by a total of 3 points loom even larger as Purdue tries to win two of its last three games to make a bowl.
Purdue continues to come out and compete which is a testament to the coaching staff getting them motivated game in and game out. I’m confident that as long as that motivation remains, the team will win more often than not.
While Purdue gets to play another team from the state of Illinois, Northwestern will pose more problems than did Illinois.
Northwestern has been relatively stingy on defense, ranking 54th nationally (10th in conference) in Total Defense including 12th in Rush Defense (4th in conference). They do drop down a bit in Team Pass Efficiency Defense where they are 58th (10th in conference) and 112th (14th in conference) in Passing Yards Allowed.
The numbers seem to indicate that teams, finding they can’t run against Northwestern, would then turn to the pass which accounts for the large amount of passing yards allowed. However, Northwestern only ranks 70th (8th in conference) in Sacks.
With Sindelar starting, it stands to reason that Purdue won’t have him run as much as they did with Blough due to Sindelar probably being not as capable a runner as Blough and Purdue won’t want to risk Sindelar also suffering an injury. Of course, Northwestern will not expect Sindelar to run either, so my guess is that there will be enough opportunities for Sindelar to run the ball just to keep Northwestern honest.
Against, Illinois, Purdue shook up their receiving corps to get some “new” starters on the field. I especially liked getting Burgess some snaps as with his size and speed, he was being underutilized as just a special teams player. Still, he has to show he can catch the ball and that’s probably still a bit of a work in progress. Trying to jam a pass in on a short crossing pattern on 3rd down isn’t probably the best opportunity (and it showed). Getting him into a fly pattern down the alley is going to be a better situation (and, it too showed). Again, with his size and speed, he’ll be tough for DBs to jam at the line of scrimmage. I’d like to think Purdue will go back to this starting lineup, especially with Sindelar getting the start.
While Sparks provides some added athleticism at the wide receiver position, Purdue may be better served to work him in at QB more than what its shown up to now. Flip flopping Blough and Sindelar didn’t really make a difference to opposing defenses as they were largely the same type of QB with similar skill sets. Not so with Sparks. Defenses will have to adjust to a heavy dose of the Wildcat (probably should have a different name for that, especially considering this week’s opponent) with the threat of a pass. Of course, that will necessitate dedicating more practice time towards stopping that formation.
Recently Purdue’s been fairly successful in establishing the run game with the trio of Knox, Jones and Worship (not necessarily in that order). Given some of the issues with Purdue’s O-line, I can’t see them abandoning the run game, even given Northwestern’s penchant for stopping opponents on the ground. Purdue will need to get creative in how it runs or find different ways to get their running backs the ball out in space.
Northwestern is coming off a FBS record third consecutive overtime win. In two of those three games, Northwestern gave up leads late which led to overtime. Last week, against Nebraska, it was Northwestern who scored late in the game to force overtime.
Regardless of how they got there, they still won the games which typically points to coaching and teams knowing how to finish (something that’s escaped Purdue on a couple of occasions).
Overall, Northwestern’s offense has been somewhat of an anomaly this season. Returning a veteran QB, Running Back and Offensive Line, the preseason thought was that Northwestern would be able to move the ball and some pundits predicted Northwestern as a dark horse for the Division Champ.
As it’s turned out, the offensive line has underperformed (although it’s been better lately) and in turn, their top running back (Justin Jackson) has also underperformed (not coincidently, he’s also been better lately). In addition, their Quarterback, Clayton Thorson, has not been consistent. When he’s been good, he’s been very good. When he’s been bad, he’s been very bad. He’s still averaging 254 yards per game and a 119.40 efficiency rating but he’s thrown 11 interceptions to just 10 touchdowns. In fact, he’s thrown an interception in 6 of their 9 games and has thrown two interceptions in 5 of their 9 games. As a team, Northwestern is ranked 91st nationally in Turnover Margin (10th in conference).
Thorson was always known as a capable runner. As a freshman, he averaged 7.5 yards per game but jumped up to 30.5 yards per game as a Sophomore. This season, however, he’s only averaging 2.2 yards per game on 71 attempts. As a team, Northwestern has given up 2.67 sacks per game which ranks 100th nationally (10th in conference). These sacks are contributing to Thorson’s rushing yardage as he’s gained 202 yards on the season but lost 182 yards.
The question then remains as to why Thorson is taking that many sacks. Given some of the issues with the O-line, that could be a key factor but, given Thorson’s running ability, it may be that he’s been instructed not to run. That could be due to the lack of a capable backup behind him or that Northwestern wants to use Thorson in more of a drop back role. Either way, teams are getting to him.
For the most part, Purdue’s does a good job shutting down other team’s running games. If they can be successful in doing so again this week, there should be some opportunities for Purdue to bring pressure and either sack Thorson or force him into a mistake, and an interception.
Getting Northwestern to turn the ball over (and for Purdue not to) could be the key on Saturday. Purdue is bound to get some breaks sooner or later so being able for their offense to start on a short field following a turnover would be a great help.
The health of Purdue’s defense, specifically McCollum and Hunte, are going to be critical for Purdue to have a chance at beating Northwestern. I believe both were pretty close to going last week against Illinois but were held out, then I’d like to think they will be ready on Saturday.
The forecast for Saturday looks to be mostly dry but cold and winds up to 13mph. If the game goes late or to overtime, rain is expected. Not the best of conditions for throwing the ball but Sindelar’s arm strength shouldn’t be an issue so it may provide a bit of an advantage for the Boilers.
Northwestern’s not known for a having a huge home field advantage to start with and when you factor in the late game, the cold weather and the threat of freezing rain, it would stand to reason that the crowd shouldn’t be a factor. Again, it could amount to somewhat of an advantage for Purdue.
Based on Northwestern’s success in overtime as of late, it would best for Purdue to try and win the game in regulation. It’s hard to argue with Northwestern coming in with a great deal of confidence if it does go to overtime just based on how the last three weeks have played out for the Wildcats. Still, the laws of averages would also suggest that their record setting three game streak of OT wins can’t go much further.
By nearly all pre-season expectations, this season has already been a success for Purdue with four wins against FBS opponents and still 1/3 of the season left to go. To hit that next level of accomplishments (e.g. a bowl game) Purdue will find it necessary to “reinvent” themselves once again offensively and cross their fingers that the defense can stay healthy the rest of the season.
It will be no small task but so far this season, Coach Brohm has shown that this team has the ability to perform beyond the point where most fans thought they were capable. Losing a team leader like they had in Blough typically has one of two effects; either the team rallies behind the loss and exceeds expectations, or; the team tends to just play out the season, or worse, folds completely.
Having seen this coaching staff in action, I tend to think it could be the former and definitely not the latter scenario we’ll see get played out.
It won’t be easy and Coach Brohm and Coach Holt (and his “evil twin”, Skip Holtz) will need to be on the top of their respective games, but, it’s doable.
Saturday can’t get here soon enough. Let’s play football!
