The Ten at Ten

The Boiling Point: Ten at Ten

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Ten at Ten, a list of some combination of 10 positives/negatives from the weekend relating to Purdue football posted at 10am eastern. Without further ado…

Positives
1) Special Teams- Our special teams unit was pretty much the only bright spot for Purdue, and we got to see them a lot. Cody Webster and Carson Wiggs continuously pinned Notre Dame with what should have been bad field position. I loved the penalty Chris Carlino drew on #60 from ND on a Purdue punt return. #60 literally couldn’t get around Carlino and ended up punching Carlino in the head while he was locked up…then kept doing it. Wish we could see some more of Carlino at linebacker since he brings a much needed energy boost.
2) NFL/NBA Players In Attendance– With this being a pretty hyped game at night, it drew a bunch of former Boilers to West Lafayette, including Roosevelt Colvin, Carl Landry, and Brian Cardinal. Not only does it help to have former players supporting their alma-mater but it also got them in front of the numerous recruits at the game. (Side note: Good to see the NFL Boilers saying Purdue, Boilermakers, Boilermaker, etc, instead of their high schools on prime-time games).
3) Attendance- Didn’t think it was going to happen, but Purdue pulled off having an almost sellout(couple thousand short). Impressed the student section was packed and how few Notre Dame fans I actually saw in the stadium outside of normal visitor sections. Unless they blended in, but there weren’t any by me really. If you left early you also missed out on the fine performance of students dressed as PacMan and three ghosts running around after each other in the student section.
4) Rest of B10 Isn’t Good- Since Purdue was actually having a night game, I got the chance to watch more of the other teams in the Big Ten. To say this is a down year for the conference might be an understatement. With how bad Purdue has played, its unbelievable that they can still finish with a decent record. Minnesota is terrible, IU is terrible, Penn St has a worse offensive situation than we do if that’s possible and barely beat IU, Ohio State has no offense, and you never know what you’ll get with Illinois or Iowa right now. I’m terrified of the Wisconsin game after they dismantled Nebraska, but no one else has been terribly impressive.
5) New Season Starts– Big Ten season officially starts this week. This is essentially a new season for Purdue, especially with the new division lineups. Gives Purdue a chance to start with a clean slate you could say.

Negatives
6) Penalties– Whether they were dumb rules(the high five) or dumb mistakes, penalties absolutely killed Purdue. Any time it seems like Purdue might have something going, a penalty killed it. It has been an ongoing theme and it has to stop with the Big Ten season coming up.
7) Defensive Ends– Purdue’s defensive line is getting absolutely no pressure. It can be narrowed down to the defensive end position. Our defensive tackles show some push, but they just end up getting double teamed every play since you don’t need to do that to any of the ends. Tommy Reese is not a good quarterback, but looks good with all of the weapons Notre Dame has. Having no pressure just helped him out. Michael Floyd also looked like the real deal; maybe his alcohol has special powers.
8) Tackling– I expected Notre Dame to get their fair share of yards through the air with all the different options they have. I didn’t know how good their running game was going to be. Their running backs pretty much ran where they wanted to with no one stopping them. Just bowled through everyone and their arm tackles.
9) Offensive Line– Majority of Purdue’s penalties are coming from this unit. Notre Dame also got pressure on the quarterback all game long and we couldn’t do anything with the running game until ND’s second string was in.
10) Coaching– It’s always hard in a blow out loss to point out exactly what plays are the coaches fault with 100% certainty. Coaches are always going to be the easy scapegoat in a game like this, even if they can’t go out their and tackle/cover/throw/catch/run/etc for the players. I’d say the coaches biggest mistake occurred before the game and not during. It was obvious that the team was not prepared for this game. Yeah, they were plenty pumped up for it, but they weren’t executing anything. Not being able to prepare properly when having two weeks is unacceptable.
The reason I’m going with this specific mistake is because like I said earlier, during this game specifically, it is impossible to say what was 100% the coaches fault like you can say with game preparation. It was clear Notre Dame was more athletic than Purdue and for all we know we could have been calling the right defensive/offensive plays and none of our players could cover the ND players or get open on passing routes. Hope publicly stated yesterday that  Robert Marve wasn’t following the game plan; rare for a coach to do especially in college. On defense I feel like every possession, Joe Holland was calling an audible on coverage. It’s hard to say what specifically during the game was the coaches fault and what was the players fault on calls. Game preparation is on the coaches though, which probably leads to any mistakes the players are making during the game.

I purposely left off the quarterback situation since saying which QB played better is like deciding which piece of crap smells better. Caleb TerBush had better stats and had good drive to end game, but Marve also looked decent on a couple of drives to get into Notre Dame territory. At same time Marve isn’t following the game plan which could be disastrous in a game when a quarterback who has played 1.5 full seasons in a little under 4 years decides he should start doing his own thing. He’s not Tom Brady who can do whatever he want.

As always let us know what positives, negatives, etc you have in the comments area below.