Mickey Joseph shares what stands out about Purdue

Nebraska and Purdue face off in West Lafayette on Saturday in a game that could end up shaping the Big Ten West race, featuring two of the three teams with a 2-1 conference record in the division. The other being Illinois, which faces off with Minnesota — the Gophers are 1-1 in conference and also a threat to win the west.

As interim Nebraska head coach Mickey Joseph ponders the Boilermakers, he sees an old, veteran team that won’t crumble under pressure.

“Well, like I said before, they have a lot of experience. When you can play in college football with seniors and juniors, with that Covid year, that means some of them are fifth-year juniors and sixth-year seniors. So that’s the maturity level. They are a very mature football team. So that means they won’t panic under distress,” Joseph said.

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Purdue quarterback Aidan O’Connell, for instance, is a sixth-year senior who walked-on at Purdue in 2017. He was in the same class of high school quarterbacks as Mac Jones, Tua Tagovailoa, Kenny Pickett, Davis Mills and Malik Willis, to name a few.

O’Connell’s play is reflective of his maturity. The former walk-on doesn’t have overwhelming physical abilities but has such a bank of experience and knowledge to tap in to that the right decision gets made more often than not. He’s No. 28 nationally in passing yards and has 10 touchdowns through the air despite missing one game.

Purdue as a team in No. 20 nationally in passing offense, executing head coach Jeff Brohm’s pass-centric scheme.

As Joseph sees it, the Boilermakers are the type of team that, more often than not, will be executing things crisply and not making self-induced errors. It’s a matchup that will require Nebraska to be sharp, itself.

“And it’s a team you’re going to have to execute against,” Joseph said.