Huskers Hoist Harrell to the Hot Seat?
Purdue 10 – Nebraska 28
Pre-Game
Let’s start with the fun stuff. My fiancé, Marissa was a member of the All-American Marching Band when she attended Purdue. Homecoming provided her with an opportunity to come back and get on the field with over 1,200 other band alums. It’s really cool to see and sets up a great weekend of seeing your friends, getting down to Harry’s and going to a packed football game. Well, the game wasn’t too great for the home team, but at least we could all be in agony with other alums.
Offense
I am not going to sugar coat it, Purdue’s offense looks awful and the scheme has been too rigid to provide progress. While I understand that Purdue was without Jahmal Edrine, Jaden Dixon-Veal, and CJ Smith, Purdue found some lightning last week in the rushing attack. One would assume that this would be an easy choice for the point of attack against Nebraska. Instead, Purdue rushed for 52 yards on 30 attempts. 18 of those rushes went for 2 or less yards. Fans were consistently watching Purdue try the same thing with very little success but rather than try it up, the offensive play calling remained rigid. Not even did Purdue attempt to run motions or sweeps to counter the fact that Nebraska stacked the box and dared Hudson Card to throw to a razor thin receiver group. This game bordered on negligence in the play-calling and it shows in the fact that Purdue went 3 and out 5 times in this game and at halftime, only had 89 offensive yards.
This brings up a bigger point beyond just this game, but I do not know if I see adjustments being made on offense at all. We cannot just say this is on personnel because Purdue has enough talent to manage better than 38 points in 3 games against FBS teams, especially given that Devin Mockobee and Reggie Love have been healthy. I would really like Graham Harrell (NOTE that this was written before breaking news of Harrell’s firing occurred) to have the offense move more. Run some bootlegs, some jet sweeps, crack tosses, anything to the outside. The fans cannot be the only ones that understand that outside plays can lighten the box and set up the rushing attack. I think the most worrying thing is that Purdue was promised to be an air-raid offense when the new coaching regime came in and it simply has not delivered anything close to it. But rather than changing it up, we continue to attempt this style of play that just isn’t working. Hudson Card cannot hit his back foot and gun the ball. The receivers are not getting a step on their route trees and the idea of a slant or short curl seems like a foregone thought. The running game surely isn’t setting up the pass. At Purdue, there is more or less a standard for how effective offenses should be and 89 yards in the first half clearly doesn’t meet that. Otherwise, the can exchange the old gold for yellow and move out to Iowa City.
Defense
I will give the defense the benefit of the doubt, slightly. Pitching a first half shutout against a stout Nebraska offense was nice. Digging a little further, Purdue made obvious adjustments to the defense to address its glaring weakness: speed to the outside. The first adjustments made were just the players on the field. CB Nyland Green played his first game at Purdue and made a noticeable difference athletically. As Dillon Thienemen does, Green was seemingly all over the field. Speaking of Thieneman, he and Joseph Jefferson switched spots this week, moving Dillon to the up safety. I think it was apparent that if a team wasn’t going to go over the top against Purdue, you bring Thieneman down to put your best defensive player that much closer to the action. Another adjustment the defense made was with Kydran Jenkins, moving from the middle spot at LB to more of an edge rusher role. This let him set the edge more effectively without being outran to the boundary. Now, were the adjustments perfect? Absolutely not but the defense wasn’t giving up the backbreaking plays time after time as they did in weeks past. Again, the defense pitched a shutout in the first half, thanks in part to putrid kicking performances, but a shutout nonetheless. They bent, but the adjustments allowed them to go over 30 minutes without breaking.
Now, what really seemed to do the defense in was penalties. 9 defensive penalties for 125 yards. Five were pass interferences, mostly where a defender just refused to turn their head and play the ball. Again, slight leeway as this was the first game of the year for Nyland Green, who had 3 of the DPI’s. The inexcusable penalty was the taunting call on Joseph Jefferson as he looked down while stepping over a player on what would have set up a third down. Purdue was leading at that point and with the offense playing the way it had, the margin for error is incredibly thin. That needs not to happen.
Special Teams
Where do I even begin? This game was a roller coaster on special teams. Purdue blocked 2 kicks for the first time since 2011 when guys named Ricardo Allen and Kawaan Short did it. On kickoffs, there were multiple penalties on both sides including offsides and holding. Purdue’s Spencer Porath missed his first career field goal attempt but then made his second to give Purdue it’s only lead of the day. Keelan Crimmins again shows that aussie punters are just bad asses. Oh and the Kicks for Cash game resulted in more made field goals than the actual game, so good for that guy. I’m sorry your third kick landed just short of you winning a car lease.
Takeaways
For the fourth game in a row, there were none for Purdue. Oh, you mean the other kind of takeaways?
I was going to use this section to call for the removal of some on offense. Well, it seems I’m not the only one with that thought. I just hope that Ryan Walters can force those running the offense to make adjustments similar to how the defense adjusted. I am clearly not a coach getting paid to make these adjustments but I am one of the many who see the need for something to change. I hope for the sake of the coaching staff, home attendance, and the program as a whole, progress is made. It doesn’t have to be sexy, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but something has to be done.