Express Thoughts: Purdue's struggles, offensive assets and basketball

GoldandBlack.com’s Express Thoughts from the Weekend column, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting, or whatever else comes to mind.

ON PURDUE’S OREGON STATE LOSS

Three games in now, a quarter of the season, and Purdue has not shown enough to look like a team that can exceed low preseason expectations. That’s just the reality of it. Neither side of the ball has been good enough — with injury being an albatross now, too — to hint at enduring strengths that’ll stack up every week against Big Ten competition.

Does that mean Purdue can’t win games and surprise somebody here and there? You never know. It’s still a game played by young people with a ball that bounces funny sometimes. But Purdue has already played enough credible competition for its cards to have been put on the table. This wasn’t a season where you get an empty-calorie 3-0 start, then life might come at you fast in October.

Can Purdue improve? Of course. Everyone can.

Can Purdue’s coaches figure some things out? No reason to think not.

Can Purdue transform? That’s the question.

The roster is what it is. The systems are what they are, and you can’t just tear it all down on Oct. 1 even if you wanted to.

There are just fundamental shortages here. Purdue does not tackle well, it does not block great and it is painfully thin on offensive playmakers. Stopping the run is beyond critical in the Big Ten, and opponents aren’t idiots. They’re going to keep running at the edges and making those pass-rushers playing rush end stop the ball. It’s not happening right now, and pursuit and open-field tackling haven’t been good enough, haven’t been good at all.

Purdue’s defense is built to blitz up front and disrupt out back. It doesn’t matter if you can’t stop the run and force drop-back situations.

Offensively, Purdue just can’t find rhythm, and can’t avoid land mines. Those two early turnovers wound up being the game. They set the tone. Credit where it’s due, I suppose: Purdue ran well. And three touchdowns on less than 50 snaps, that’s reflective of an offense that could have done something had it not melted down in critical ways or if the defense could have gotten off the field.

But all that stuff that happened and at some point, you are what the results say you are.

Yeah, Purdue can get better, but I ask again: Can it transform?

ON OFFENSIVE ASSETS

Purdue has an acute wide receiver problem right now, and that’s going to be a lead balloon tied to this offense’s ankle.

The Boilermakers got 13 yards receiving from wide receivers at Oregon State and more damaging gaffes — a third-down drop and a third-down route wrongly run short of the marker — than plays. Jahmal Edrine is out and CJ Smith has yet to debut. They’d have made a difference, but that team you saw Saturday night if you could find the CW was what Purdue has for the time being and it sure didn’t look good enough.

Kudos to tight end Max Klare for becoming the guy in the passing game, but what do you think happens now for him? He will be a marked man. Three games of tape is enough to eliminate most of the element of surprise. When Klare stands up in the slot, Nebraska is going to stand at attention.

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL

If Purdue’s going to win the Big Ten again this season, it’s going to have to peak just in time for the postseason, because its final five games are harrowing: At Michigan State, at Indiana, UCLA at home, talented-as-hell Rutgers at home, then at Illinois. That’s arguably your three toughest road games of the season in a span of five games.

Further, let’s look at January. Purdue’s West Coast swing — Oregon, then Washington — comes six days after it plays on the other coast at Rutgers. Not ideal, playing on both seaboards within the span of a week. Who in college basketball has ever had to do that during their conference seasons?

Look, putting this schedule together is impossible and much respect to the good souls in Rosemont who have to do it, but I have to think that TV’s aversion to putting any of its bigger-ticket games up against football in December creates these death-march stretches of games in-season, another element to how the schedule now looms larger than ever in these title races.

These are some of the challenges that come with the illogical new Big Ten. They will influence outcomes.