Something different, please.
Another Saturday, another Purdue Boilermakers football game!
Just the basics: we got ourselves a noon game on the road, gang. Your Boilers head north to Wisconsin to play the Badgers in an environment nobody wants to play in, even if the Badgers are 2-2.
So yeah, last week sucked. Nebraska did everything they could to self-sabotage in the first half (with two blocked field goals, too, so shoutout to special teams!) and still walked out of Ross-Ade with a multi-score win.
Our offensive coordinator got fired shortly thereafter. I could write a whole retrospective of Graham Harrell’s brief tenure, but nobody wants to read that. It can be boiled down to two summaries:
- You know that line in Office Space when John C. McGinley’s character, in an employee evaluation, asks “What would you say…you do here?”
- For a guy who was hired for being a Texas pipeline recruiter and set to install a semi-air raid offense, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY YOU DO HERE?
Anyway, we have to see some better scheming. Run blocking again looks fine, not great but fine, but there is almost no passing attack to be seen and Hudson Card has not received much help. I don’t want a team where the safety valve tight end is the biggest threat as a receiver.
My solutions as an armchair coach, you ask? Nobody asked, but…
Establish that run game early. Open the door to a passing threat as soon as Wisconsin thinks you’re only going to attempt 15 passes in a game. Crazy Legs and Dr. Love are more than capable of establishing some offensive momentum.
If the tight end (Max Klare) is your safety valve, why not call some routes where you roll out Hudson Card to his non-dominant side and he throws it across his body to a tight end that has evaded the secondary relatively unnoticed? I’ve seen him do it!
If I don’t see more attempted utilization of the big sideline receivers for which the Boilers reached into the transfer portal, I’m going to scream. Last year the whole thing was “dang, we have talented receivers but no guys big enough to go up and get the ball over a talented cornerback.” Now there are several. Use them, please for the love of all things holy use them.
The Boilers’ lack of offensive identity has been downright offensive. I wanted to believe in Graham Harrell and this firing was certainly a “something has to change or I’m fired too” move from head coach Ryan Walters, but Purdue fans are fed up, deserve a better product on the field, and are right to believe so.
And yes I chose a picture of Hudson Card pre-snap vs. Oregon State because it looks like he’s praying for better days ahead.
Two more things tangentially related:
The sky is not falling because a quarterback decommitted. A four-star QB decommitting after the offensive coordinator is fired is par for the course (wrong sport again, dang it, I’ll get better). Life goes on.
None of the aforementioned polite suggestions in the passing game can come into fruition without the help of the offensive line.
In the words of one of the rudest customers I ever dealt with in my service industry days, when referring to his distaste for the new debit/credit tap function on the point of sale system:
I DON’T LIKE IT. FIX IT, IDIOT.