Doyel: 0-1 start for Ryan Walters not what anyone at Purdue wanted, but better days ahead
This is a start for whatever comes next for Purdue football. A good start? Not saying that. All the scoreboards at Ross-Ade Stadium say Fresno State beat Purdue 39-35 on Saturday, and after 100 years on the job, Ross-Ade Stadium isn’t lying.
The statistics aren’t lying either. The stats say Fresno State had the better offense and the better defense, and it’s true. Fresno State outgained Purdue 487-364. The Bulldogs threw it better, ran it better and coached it better. Longtime coach Jeff Tedford — career record: 119-75 — has a team on a roll. Fresno State won its last nine games last season, making this a 10-game winning streak for the Bulldogs, so they’re no joke. They’re also not a Power 5 conference team, or whatever we’re calling the top of the food chain in college football these days, but the Bulldogs are good. They’re probably very good.
How’s Purdue? Pretty good, probably. Hard to say after one game under new coach Ryan Walters — career record: 0-1 — but this was a start.
Ryan Walters is a secondary guru. It's clear Purdue defenders have a lot to learn.
Report card: Grading Purdue on its 39-35 loss to Fresno State
Quarterback Hudson Card looks fine. Explosive little receiver Deion Burks looks a whole lot like former Purdue All-American Rondale Moore. Running back Devin Mockobee looks like Devin Mockobee, meaning he’s still swiveling those hips and shaking those shoulder pads and crazy-legging it down the field. Pass-rushers Kydran Jenkins and Nic Scourton look like future NFL players. Wouldn’t surprise me if safety Dillon Thieneman, a true freshman from Westfield, is in the NFL someday too. He looked that good.
Some other stuff, well, it didn’t look so good. Several key aspects of this football program have to get better, but they will. The offensive line, playing with two new guards and one new tackle and third- and fourth-string centers, will get better. The secondary, which looked lost on multiple Fresno State touchdowns, will get better. This is a complex defense Walters runs, and his track record as a coordinator suggests he will get through to these guys eventually.
Ryan Walters also needs to get through to his head coach, which is to say, himself. Because his players aren’t the only ones who need to get better.
Ryan Walters made some mistakes
We all know how this works. Someone’s going to read that last sentence — his players aren’t the only ones who need to get better — and pout on social media about that mean ol’ guy at the IU Star, hating on the new Purdue football coach. First, it’s the IndyStar. Second, I’m not that ol’.
Third, you saw the game. Lots of you were among the 54,898 at Ross-Ade Stadium on this gorgeous, steamy Saturday. More of you were watching on the Big Ten Network. You saw the Purdue offense run the same play over and over on crucial short-yardage plays — handoff up the middle, behind those two new guards and that third- or fourth-string center — and fail every time.
You saw the Purdue offense playing so fast, it didn’t allow officials to review a play where Mockobee scored from the 2 but was ruled down at the 1, a play that would’ve been reviewed and overturned had Purdue not outsmarted itself and run a quick play that didn’t work. Purdue survived that gaffe, barely. The Boilermakers needed six more snaps to score from inside the 2, aided by a Fresno State penalty that gave Purdue another set of downs.
Purdue didn’t survive another gaffe, though — Walters calling a timeout to “ice” the Fresno State kicker in the final seconds of the first half. Walters’ timeout nullified Bulldogs kicker Dylan Lynch’s miss to the right. What did Walters do wrong there? Well, the rules have changed in college football.
Old rule: You can call that timeout three times — you can ice that kicker three times — if you have all three of your timeouts.
New rule: You cannot call consecutive timeouts. Meaning, only that first kick has any suspense for the kicker, any doubt in his mind that the play will — or won’t — happen. Purdue called the timeout, Lynch missed the kick, but he had another chance with no stress. No last-second timeout to worry about. He drilled it from 52 yards.
That’s a small thing, maybe. This is bigger:
Lynch was able to kick that field goal because of some suspect — a nicer word for “shoddy” — clock management by Walters on the previous series. The Boilermakers had the ball with 57 seconds left at their 20, gained no yards on a Card scramble, and then hurried to the line for another play. With less than 50 seconds left, 80 yards from the end zone and an offense that hadn’t done much since an 84-yard catch-and-run TD pass from Card to Burks on its third snap from scrimmage, Purdue ran a quick play and threw an incompletion to stop the clock.
Now Fresno State has a reason to call a timeout of its own — and does, after Purdue’s running play on third down — to force a punt and take over near midfield with 22 seconds left. And wouldn’t you know it? That’s just enough time to kick a long field goal before halftime. With help from the Purdue sideline.
There’s a reason Jeff Tedford has won 119 games. And there’s a reason Ryan Walters has lost one.
Purdue receiver Deion Burks is special
How about the positive? This is me, being fair. Not "trying to be fair," because that suggests failure. No, this is me being fair. Purdue lost, right? Its coach made mistakes, right? Why would you be mad at me?
For noticing?
Let’s notice the good stuff, too, because Purdue isn’t Michigan or Ohio State or Alabama or Georgia, playing every week for its spot in the College Football Playoff. The stakes aren’t that high for the 2023 Boilermakers, so let’s not turn every game into a referendum on the season. Let’s damn sure not do it Week 1.
Instead, let’s point out that Purdue has a defensive-minded coach — Purdue has a possible defensive genius at coach — whose defense will get better. With Jenkins and Scourton chasing quarterbacks and Thieneman hitting everything that moves and even outrunning the football for an interception late in the game, this defense will be OK. It’ll take some time, same as a fancy new offense takes times for a team to master. Ryan Walters isn’t coaching defensive arithmetic, or even algebra. This is some newfangled math, a defense he created from scratch. His players will get the hang of it, but give them time.
The bright side to this game — unless you’re too big of a meathead to see such a thing in a loss — was the Purdue offense. To repeat, the Boilermakers have a defensive specialist at coach, but its offense wasn’t the problem Saturday. Well, except for this: The line’s inability to make a push on short-yardage plays, and the coordinator (Graham Harrell) not realizing that and calling the same play repeatedly, and the head coach (Walters) letting it happen.
“We have a half-a-yard to gain,” Walters said afterward, “we’ve got to gain that half-a-yard.”
Well sure. But maybe try another way?
Anyway … Purdue’s offense has some pretty cool pieces. Card wasn’t quite as awesome as advertised — Walters built him up pretty good on Monday — but he was solid: 17-for-30 for 254 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. He ran six times for 29 yards. He wasn't great, but he was good enough.
Deion Burks? He was great. He’s a 5-11, 195-pound pack of muscle — he can bench 350 pounds and squat 450 pounds, and do each of those three times — and the fastest player on the field, too. Burks caught four passes for 152 yards, and they were all huge: touchdowns of 84 and 17 yards, a 7-yard conversion on 4th-and-1, and a 44-yard gain to the Fresno State 1, leading to a Mockobee touchdown on the next snap. Burks also forced two pass-interference penalties against Fresno State that aided touchdown drives.
Did you think I was kidding about the Rondale Moore comparison?
Not kidding about any of this. The Purdue offense can and will score points. The Purdue defense will get better in time. So will the coaching staff, seeing how this was its first game together, and its head coach’s first game in charge.
An 0-1 start to the Ryan Walters Era isn’t what anyone in West Lafayette wanted, and while things will improve, the schedule isn’t simple. You seeing six victories on there? I can find them, but confession time: I used a magnifying glass and wishful thinking.
We’ll see how the season ends. We saw how it started, and as Ryan Walters said afterward:
"Didn't expect to get hit in the mouth with adversity in Week 1, but we will get better from Week 1 to Week 2."
And he said:
“I’ve got to be better. Staff’s got to be better.”
And he said:
"We'll not let one game define us."
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Gaffes hurt Purdue football, Ryan Walters drops debut to Fresno State
