Points After: Analysis from Purdue’s loss to Syracuse

Points After is GoldandBlack.com’s traditional Purdue football’s post-game blog, an analytical platform to complement our standard on-site game coverage. Today, Purdue’s 35-20 loss to Syracuse.

I can’t decide whether Garrett Shrader was being polite to Purdue or dealing it a great indignity when he simply decided not to score a 76-yard touchdown late in the fourth quarter, instead taking a dive after a 39-yard gain. Had he continued on, it would have been the Syracuse quarterback’s fifth touchdown run, put him well north of 200 yards on the ground and made this a three-touchdown ‘Cuse win, instead of two.

Maybe he was just tired, having spent his Saturday night running through but mostly around a Boilermaker defense that just wasn’t up to the job tonight. Whether that was preparation, discipline, execution or whatever, I can’t say, but all of the above certainly apply. Purdue just had no answer for Shrader’s sleight of hand, very little discipline in containment on the edges, where Purdue turns its guys loose, aggressiveness that can wielded against any defense.

To win on this night, Purdue needed to hold up its end in a shootout.

By halftime, Hudson Card had lost three fumbles, all unique to one another in their causes, relevance, ramifications and responsible parties. There was also a batted-ball interception. Those were Purdue’s first four turnovers of the season and two of them came in scoring territory; this was what decided the game, in effect. Purdue squandered opportunities when its defensive problems mandated it maximize them.

It was kind of a total malfunction when you look at the totality of it.

Two years straight now against the Orange, Purdue hurt itself with yellow. Some of those costly penalties tonight were more deserved than others — I have no idea what roughing the passer is anymore — but 11 penalties for 127 yards might have been the story of this game if not for the turnovers and continued defensive failures on third-and-long. In that sense, this was Fresno State all over again. The penalties, well, this was Syracuse, as in 2022, all over again. Purdue’s been penalized the equivalent of two-and-a-half football fields these past two games against these guys. Two very different Purdue teams, same albatross.

Let’s not forget too that this very easily could have come down to a missed PAT. I always thought it was surprising that Ryan Walters and his staff recruited mostly every position off the transfer/late-signee market, except kicker.

Look, Purdue’s been almost good enough one game, good enough the next, then not good enough the next these first three weeks. This is a process, and there’s no guarantee where Purdue’s ceiling or its floor this season will turn out to be, but as I said, Saturday night was a malfunction, a thud in prime time, and now there are more concerns percolating.

Purdue’s going to see read option offense. It’s such a big part of college football nowadays. It’ll never give up 200-plus yards to a quarterback again, but sometimes all it takes is one big play to completely flip a football game. Add tonight’s breakdowns to emerging penalty issues — again, some more deserved than others — and this continued inability to get stops in the highest-success-rate situations. Third-and-long has been the dubious story of Purdue’s defense’s season thus far. It cost them the Fresno State game and loomed large in this outcome.

Nobody ought to be tearing everything down and starting over after just three games, but this is an issue worthy of considerable examination for everybody on that defensive side of the ball.

It’s not the only area.

Short-yardage offense just isn’t working. When you’re trying to set an aggressive tone for your football team by not settling for field goals, cool, but if you can’t reliably get a yard or two — not an uncommon issues for offenses built to spread you out and weaponize space — then you are hamstrung and you’ve got to do things different.

Looked to me like Syracuse stymied Purdue early by taking away the vertical ball by sitting back and keeping everything in front of it. You’ve got to be able to run the football against that sort of thing. Didn’t work. The offensive front took a step back from Virginia Tech and Hudson Card, I don’t know if he’s totally settled in and comfortable running read option himself. The bungled handoff with Tyrone Tracy went sideways from the start, I think, in the handling of the shotgun snap, then when Card tried to pull the ball out, he’d taken the play fake too far and the ball was jarred loose. That stuff has to be smoothed out.

You have another running game issue here suddenly. Just because all them were recovered (or otherwise stayed with Purdue) doesn’t change the fact that Devin Mockobee fumbled three times in the second half alone. That’s at least four now this season for him. Doesn’t matter that Purdue kept them all. That’s a position where trust is essential.

Tonight had to be really disappointing for Purdue. Tonight’s environment was awesome and this was a chance for these new-look Boilermakers to make splash, or at least to build on success. But there’s promise being shown. You had to look a little harder tonight than you did the first two weeks. They just have to bring it all together.

Tonight they didn’t bring nearly enough of it together.

This could be the deal all year for all we know, ups and downs.

Again, this is the most unknown of seasons, a brand-new team. Tonight was not a positive step, but it was just one step of many.

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