Walters to stay the course in Corvallis
The points kept coming last Saturday … 14-0, 42-0, 52-7. It was difficult to watch. As Purdue trudged off the field, the Ross-Ade Stadium scoreboard glowed with the horrific news: Notre Dame 66, Purdue 7.
It was the worst loss in Purdue history, a defeat that will echo.
“What happened happened,” said Ryan Walters. “We can’t ignore it, but we also can’t let it affect how we are throughout the season.”
Walters isn’t running away from this albatross. He’s owning the ugliness. And his belief in what he’s doing? It is unwavering.
“So, I’m as confident as I have ever been,” said Walters. “I have strong belief in what we’re doing and how we’re doing things. You can’t have, like I said, an impulsive or knee-jerk reaction to a four-quarter instance.
“You can’t ignore it, like I said earlier. You have to address the issues and find reasons why it happened and attack those and make the struggle a strength, but I’m not deviating from what we’re doing or what we believe in. We just have to get better.”
The issues were numerous. But it can be boiled down thusly: The offense couldn’t stay on the field, and the defense couldn’t get off the field. The was–in coaching parlance–no complementary football. To wit: The defense allowed ND to convert 7 of 12 third downs. Purdue? It went 1 of 12 and was out gained 578-162.
It just makes Walters set his jaw tighter.
“You know, in what I have seen throughout my career when you start to deviate from your plan or deviate from your beliefs as a program, then as a leader you start to falter, and that gets felt and permeates throughout the locker room, and it is not good,” said Walters.
“The guys that I have seen be successful when they have performances like this or maybe a string of adverse moments, if they don’t falter and they stay steady and even-keeled and stay convicted in what they believe in, then so do the people that follow them.”
MORE PURDUE-OREGON STATE: First and 10 | First Look | Purdue’s Ryan Walters: ‘Fully expect us to respond the right way’ | The 3-2-1 | History of Purdue’s West Coast Trips | In the huddle | Number crunching
Now, it’s on to Oregon State. As Purdue heads west today to the Willamette Valley, it finds itself in the same situation as Notre Dame last week: Desperate to win coming off an embarrassing loss.
Is this a must-win for the Boilermakers? Is it an overstatement to make such a proclamation? Call it what you want, but no doubt Purdue already is at a major crossroads in the 2024 season … before even one leaf has fallen off a tree.
Walters can’t worry about perceptions. He’s been focused this week on fixing things.
“I think you draw back on lessons learned, right?” said Walters. “We just saw what happens when you get punched in the mouth and you flinch. So moving forward if that happens, especially early, we have to punch back, and we have to embrace the challenge, embrace the physicality, and embrace the urgency with which we need to execute in order to climb back and get momentum back.
“I thought one of the reasons that it kept faltering is we weren’t playing complementary football. Defensively we couldn’t get a stop on third downs, and offensively we were off the field fast. That is not a recipe for success. So, you know, we’ll address that and be better moving forward.”
See you in Corvallis, Ore.
