A year ago, Purdue looked like a team on the rise while the Hoosiers were on the verge of another rebuild…things have changed.
366 days ago, Purdue and Indiana faced off for the Old Oaken Bucket under vastly different circumstances. The Hoosiers limped into the game at 3-9, head coach Tom Allen was a dead man walking, and Indiana’s roster was on the verge of another gut job. Meanwhile, Purdue was showing signs of improvement. They handled Minnesota at home, putting up 49 points in the process, but then dropped the next game on the road to Northwestern playing back-up quarterbacks.
Even with a loss in Evanston, Purdue looked like the program with a brighter immediate future. First year head coach Ryan Walters experienced several bumps along the way, but Purdue was finishing the season playing some of their best football and Walters was doing some impressive things on the recruiting trail.
Purdue beat the Hoosiers 35-31 on the back of a 17-3 4th quarter that erased a 10-point Indiana lead and kept The Bucket in West Lafayette. Hudson Card finished the game with 275 yards passing, 3 touchdowns, and no interceptions. He also ran for 85 yards and a touchdown on 12 carries. Deion Burks pulled down 7 receptions for 87 yards, Nic Scourton had 2 sacks, 2 tackles for loss and 6 tackles. With Burks, Scourton, and Card scheduled to return for the 2024 season, things were looking up for the Boilermakers.
That’s pretty much the last good thing that’s happened to Purdue. Ryan Walters and company haven’t won a FBS game since knocking off the Hoosiers. Meanwhile, Indiana has already secured their first 10-win season in school history and looks to be on the verge of making it into the inaugural 12 team college football playoff.
Needless to say, while Purdue won the bucket, Indiana won the offseason.
The Hoosiers first order of business was thanking Tom Allen for his service and changing the locks on the football facility.
The next order of business was hiring James Madison coach Curt Cignetti. The former West Virginia quarterback was on Nick Saban’s original Albama staff as the wide receiver coach and recruiting coordinator and used that as a launching point for his head coaching career. Then he started winning games. His first stop, ironically enough, was at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He stayed at IUP 6 seasons, turned them into a regular in the FCS playoff scene and then moved on to Elon where he took a team with 4-20 conference record over the 6 previous seasons and immediately turned them into FCS contenders. He spent two seasons in North Carolina, broke James Madison’s 22 game conference winning streak in 2018, and was subsequently hired by James Madison.
The wins didn’t stop at JMU. He took the Dukes to the FCS championship game his first season, kept them in the upper echelon of FCS, and then guided the program through the transition from FCS to FBS with seemingly no problems, finishing 8-3 in the Sun Belt. When he took the Indiana job, I honestly wondered why. With the coming 12-team playoff, it seemed like he had a better shot of getting the G5 spot in the tournament at JMU than making it at Indiana.
I was clearly wrong.
Cignetti cleared out most of the Indiana locker room and went to work in the portal. He went about things a little differently than most coaches, though. His mantra was/is “production over potential.” He went out looking for guys with a history of producing on the college level, as opposed to players that were highly touted out of high school that were looking for a new home in hopes of kickstarting their careers.
His first move was to bring key players from James Madison. Thirteen Dukes matriculated with him to Bloomington and helped establish his culture from the first practice, but he didn’t bring his guys with him as a favor, he brought them because they can play. Their depth chart is littered with former JMU players.
On offense, their leading receiver (Elijah Sarratt) and leading rusher (Ty Son Lawton) both came from JMU. On defense Mikail Kamara, a JMU transfer, leads the way in sacks and corner D’angelo Ponds, another former Duke, leads the secondary with 9 pass defenses. Their top 2 tackles, linebackers Aiden Fisher and Jailin Walker, you guessed it, both played college football in Virginia in 2023.
Leaning into his “production over potential” theory, instead of going with talented, yet untested 4* Tennessee transfer Tayven Jackson (and brother of TJD), he brought in Kurtis Rourke. The 2022 MAC Player of the Year out of Ohio University is nothing if not experienced, as a member of the 2019 recruiting class, he had 36 games, 7951 passing yards, and 51 touchdowns under his belt before debuting for the Hoosiers.
Meanwhile in West Lafayette, Ryan Walters went with the opposite strategy. He prioritized potential over production in the portal. Instead of bringing in players that built their reputation in college football, he brought in guys that built their reputation in high school. Before everyone gets excited, no one knows the best way to handle the transfer portal at the moment. Walters gambled on former top level high school recruits he thought needed a fresh start, and the gamble didn’t play off. He wasn’t the only coach to make that gamble (I’ll get to that in a different article), and he wasn’t the only coach to get burned.
I won’t get too far into Purdue’s portal flop but consider the experience difference at wide receiver between Purdue and Indiana coming into this season.
Purdue
WR: Shamar Rigby – True Freshman – 0 Career Receptions
WR: Jaron Tibbs – Redshirt Freshman – 5 Career Receptions
WR: Jahmal Edrine – 2nd Year Starter (started for FAU in 2022) – 40 career receptions
Their big investment in the portal at wide receiver, CJ Smith, blew a hamstring in camp, but even if he started over Rigby, you’re looking at an additional 6 career receptions.
Indiana
WR: Miles Cross – 105 Career Receptions (all at Ohio, most from quarterback Rourke)
WR: Myles Price – 161 Career Receptions
WR: Elijah Sarratt – 82 Career Receptions
Walters and former offensive coordinator Graham Harrell went all-in on potential over production. I will 100% admit that I liked the theory behind the thinking at the time. I was still in a pre-transfer portal mindset where the goal of college football was to accumulate as much potential as possible and then develop it. Needless to say, my thoughts on the matter are significantly different now that I’ve seen that theory in action.
You want to know why Purdue looks like a team full of guys learning to play college football this season? It’s because Purdue, for the most part, is a team full of guys learning to play college football this season. You know what guys learning to play college football do? They line up wrong, they drop passes, they don’t run correct routes, etc. All those things eventually get ironed out, but while that happens, most teams lean on their experienced guys. You can get away with breaking in one new college football player, but Purdue started the season with 3 guys that didn’t start a game in 2023. Now that I type that, man, that was a bold gamble by the staff, and it already cost Graham Harrell his job. It’s one of the reasons why I’m writing this article instead of an Indiana preview because in a way, it works perfectly as a preview.
Tomorrow, an inexperienced Purdue team with an inexperienced head coach faces off against an experienced Indiana team with an experienced head coach. Purdue will do things that inexperienced teams do, and Indiana will punish Purdue’s inexperience, because that’s what experienced teams do.
I don’t know what the future holds for this coaching staff, but whoever is in charge heading into the offseason needs to take a page out of Indiana’s portal playbook and find some guys that have already proven it on the field. Interestingly enough, some of Walters’ biggest gets in recruiting and the portal will have some experience heading into next season, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to reap the benefits after this trainwreck of a season.
Either way, tomorrow’s probably going to be bad for the Boilermakers. It’s called gambling for a reason, and Walters and company busted when they put together this high ceiling (in theory) low floor roster for 2023.