Whoa….Definitely didn’t expect the above picture to happen today…. I don’t know what to make of this Purdue team now under Danny Hope. I’m almost ready to retract my post from a few weeks ago (but I won’t retract the picture). Sure, based on the way that Illinois and Indiana have played this year, I think a 4-8 or 3-9 season is still on the horizon for Purdue, but I expected the other 2 wins to be over Toledo and Northern Illinois, not Ohio State of all teams.
So what to make of Purdue football now? I’m starting to wonder if Hope might actually be the answer for them. Sure, they are only 2-5, and some people wanted him to get fired already, but winning big games over highly ranked teams randomly is something that will definitely draw interest in the program and maybe get some better recruits down the road. If Purdue is going to suck at football for the next few years, I’ll take an unpredictable suck over a predictable suck any day.
Just think about it. Purdue’s win today was their first over a ranked team since 2003. They had a losing streak of 19 games in a row against ranked teams, more than any other division 1-A team, which I guess means even Louisiana Monroe and Buffalo. Since I started college at Purdue in 2001, they only won that 1 game against a ranked team, versus Iowa, in 2003. So yeah, that might be a sign of a bad team, but they weren’t even all that bad since 2001. From 2001-2008, they were 54-46, and made it to 6 Bowl games in those 8 years. They even had 3 wins over Notre Dame, 1 over Ohio State, and 1 over Michigan during that time span, but none were ranked when they played. So what happened?
I think after the Rose Bowl year, Joe Tiller got into a rut. He knew what it took to beat bad teams, and Purdue almost always won those games, but they never, ever, beat a team that had more talent than them (they were probably a little better than Iowa in 2003, and they beat Ohio State and Michigan in very down years for them). Purdue became so absolutely predictable to watch you could accurately predict the entire outcome of their season by looking at their schedule after seeing how well or poorly they beat their usual MAC opponent in Week 1.
Danny Hope at least appears to have this team motivated, they just keep shooting themselves in the foot with turnovers. Their defense is still pretty bad, but they played well today and it appears their new defensive coordinator is actually learning from his mistakes and starting to improve his defensive schemes, unlike his prevent-happy predecessor. Just think, After the win at Toledo, Purdue almost beat ranked Oregon on the road, got embarrassed by Northern Illinois, almost beat (now) ranked Notre Dame, completely choked away a huge lead to Northwestern, and got smoked by Minnesota by more turnovers. If a few things had gone their way, they could probably be 5-2 right now instead of 2-5, or even 7-0 if they had less turnovers, and keep in mind this team still isn’t very good….
So I’m not here to crown Danny Hope as Purdue’s savior yet, but he at least he has me interested. Now I can honestly say I have no idea if Purdue will win or lose in given week. They will probably still lose more than win, but now I actually want to watch and see what happens. Hope has his guys playing tough, and if he can improve his talent more through recruiting, we might see the Boilermakers back in a New Year’s Day bowl in 2-3 years. If they stay like this, I’d much rather watch the Spoilermakers occasionaly beat good Big Ten teams and Notre Dame than consistently see them go 6-6 by beating 2 or 3 MAC teams and 3 or 4 Big Ten bottom feeders and lose a crappy bowl like the last 8 years.
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