Big Picture: Purdue’s flaws exposed at Oregon State

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

Purdue’s defense was good enough to start Saturday night’s eventual 38-21 loss at run-of-the-mill Oregon State. Matter of fact, it gave the Boilermakers chances to squander chances. Had Purdue jumped out to a lead like it should have, then the butterfly effect that could have followed might have shaped this game differently.

No, the defense was good to start this game.

Then … it broke off into the sea.

Look, blame the offense all you want. Those turnovers were brutal. But you know what stops an offense better than anything?

Not having the ball.

Purdue only ran 47 plays, a bunch of them in garbage time. It possessed the ball for less than 20 minutes.

And that was more on the defense than the offense.

When Purdue tried its on-side kick with seven minutes left, down 10, that was a clear vote of no confidence in its ability to get the ball back by stopping the run. It did get the ball back, but only because Oregon State scored its fourth rushing TD of the day.

That strong start quickly gave way to the hard reality that this defensive-minded program’s defense isn’t near good enough. It doesn’t seem to run particularly well, it doesn’t tackle well, and discipline has lapsed far too regularly. It does not play sideline-to-sideline particularly well and certainly doesn’t hold the edge as it has needed to these past two weeks against teams determined to attack the perimeter.

Running quarterbacks are turning Purdue’s man defense and single-high-safety into liabilities and turning edge players who were recruited as pass-rushers against their presumed strengths. The light box that comes with scheme is being exploited and a lack of athleticism (and experience in some cases) illuminated. This year’s transfer portal class has not been an upgrade to this point, though it is a long season and Purdue’s best newcomers on both sides of the ball remain sidelined.

You don’t change systems overnight, but Ryan Walters and his staff don’t need anyone to tell them that this has to be better if Purdue’s going to do much of anything this season.

The offense turned the ball over twice. Oregon State did not turn it over, though a good replay angle on the fumbled punt would have been just splendid; same for the first-down spot late in the first half. Purdue’s luck was dreadful in this game, but football karma can be a real female dog. You can’t fumble in the red zone, drop an easy third-down conversion and then miss the block that created that one-in-a-million pick-six bounce and expect breaks to go your way, particularly on the road.

But Purdue needed the ball and a chance to play off its running success. Kudos to Devin Mockobee and Reggie Love for running hard, but Purdue’s lack of playmakers on offense — other than Max Klare, who’s awesome — was stunning.

The defense couldn’t deliver.

Purdue’s in a tough place right now, clearly, and it doesn’t reflect well on direction, but this portal stuff is going to be hard, people are going to come to find out. Building used to be a five-year thing; now it’s more like a five-week thing. That’s part of this, this starting over every year stuff.

I’m not writing that to excuse Ryan Walters or anyone else involved here, because this should be better, as he’d be the first to tell you. If Purdue just tackled better, the past two weeks would have at least looked better. This was the Big Ten out west, and Big Ten football — blocking and tackling — needed to show up. It didn’t.

Purdue wanted this to be a statement that last week was an aberration. Tonight, against a very beatable peer-level program, things looked better for a few minutes, but only a few minutes.