Big Picture: Mixed feelings in Champaign

Big Picture is GoldandBlack.com’s half-heartedly named post-game opinion/analysis piece, written by Brian Neubert after most Purdue football games.

Of all the worsts about this Purdue football season prior to halftime on Saturday, this was the worst worst: The massacres that too often occurred starting in third quarters.

Today, in that thrilling and weird and deeply-personal-for-both-sides 50-49 overtime Illinois win, Purdue flipped that script in a way few would have even thought possible. That wasn’t just a pulse being shown, it was everything all at once that had been wholly absent just a week earlier in a rock-bottom loss at Wisconsin.

The question then becomes: Was this a transformational event or a one-off, lightning-in-a-bottle deal brought on by a defensive touchdown and the unique and irreplicable insider knowledge Purdue had on this specific opponent?

The question then would become: How much does it matter. Purdue’s 1-5 and now comes the hard part of the schedule. Where was this in September?

But it was certainly a refreshing change, a game Purdue would have won had replay provided evidence enough for that likely-game-sealing fumble to count. Purdue made the play there but got jobbed. Luck rarely sides with the team that’s lost four straight, but it is what it is.

Now, Purdue still has problems, but different problems.

The offense got a spark today from Ryan Walters calling the offensive plays, just as you’d have predicted. That’s probably not sustainable, nor might it be as effective when not playing a team whose coaches Walters may as well share a brain with. That was his defense he was scheming to defeat today, and if you need a safe cracked, who’s more qualified than the safe-maker?

Anyway, Purdue did show a competitive heartbeat, too, but it needed that a month ago, and now come existential questions.

Look, Ryan Browne was great today. Kudos to him.

But he was great in an offense built for him, built for this opponent, an offense people from here on out will be ready for. It was a running offense Purdue passed out of, not the passing offense you can run out of that Purdue has failed to construct for Hudson Card. It’s almost like this was the “complementary football” offense Walters has wanted to better support his defense, which still isn’t near good enough to beat good teams, but at least made big plays today, notably the touchdown and the game-sealing turnover that wasn’t.

But in a lot of ways, this game was decided by third-and-long. Conversions of 12, 20 and 17 yards led to 17 Illinois points, including the touchdown before halftime and the game-tying field goal at the end of regulation.

That botched kickoff before half, that wasn’t the issue. It was the third-and-20 the Illini converted thereafter that set up a touchdown and then rippled throughout a game that was decided by a single point.

At this point, the defensive problems aren’t going away, especially with three top-five teams left on the schedule — assuming Ohio State stays in the top five, as it should.

And you’re probably not going to see any more 33-point (not counting the defensive TD) second halves anymore from the offense anymore.

Where does Purdue go from here offensively? Card has not had enough opportunities to show it at Purdue — an all-systems failure that goes well beyond him — but he is a good quarterback, whether anyone mad about losing has been willing to recognize or not.

Browne played great today in the sort of controlled, mistake-proof, balanced setting Purdue has never, inexplicably, put around Card. Why moving pockets and misdirection and screens and designed QB runs every now and then weren’t part of Purdue’s game plans until now, it doesn’t make sense, but what do I know?

Regardless, your system from here on out is tethered to your quarterback, to your offensive identity. You gotta pick one and really commit to it, hope you get better somehow on defense, hope for some luck and hope somewhere along the line you can shock the world, like you almost did today.

Shocking the world. At Illinois, a card-carrying member of your own weight class in the suffocating Big Ten.

That’s where things are right now.