I’m going to go into more depth on the individual games as we near the fall. So I’ll take this moment to express how I for one have loved how Purdue has scheduled games the last few years, and I know that most of it was handled long ago as college football games are scheduled many many years in advance. As much fun as getting cupcake wins over FCS teams is. I want to see my Boilers take on the best. I believe that it also helps the national brand for Purdue because when talking heads on TV talk about the hardest schedules for the year, Purdue has routinely been near the top. When you extend this thought out to recruiting, Purdue can now flaunt to recruits that they will get to play all of these teams allowing them to compete against the best. It’s frustrating sometimes that Purdue doesn’t have those buy games, but at the end of the day, these high major games will only help prepare the Boilers for the grind that is B1G play!

Key Pieces:

As with the schedule, we’ll go more in-depth with the different players/position groups over time but we can quickly take a look at some of the key position groups as well as questions regarding those groups for the upcoming season.

Firstly, I would be ignorant not to start with the luxury of riches that Purdue now has at the skill positions on offense. With Rondale Moore coming off an injury, David Bell coming off a 1000yd receiving season. That is a tandem that will give opposing coaching staffs’ nightmares all season long. I am personally excited to see Amad Anderson and Mershawn Rice and their progression as I think pairing them with Bell/Moore gives Purdue so many weapons on offense. I would also be foolish not to mention Maliq Carr, but we’ll go into more depth with the incoming class in another article. The point being that Purdue has one of the most dangerous WR rooms in the country and I for one can not be more excited.

Another big question mark is the QB position. In 2019 we saw 3 different QB’s take the field for Purdue. Elijah Sindelar, Jack Plummer, and Aiden O’Connell. With Sindelar gone the starting position now appears to be Jack Plummer’s but one can’t overlook the play of the walk-on in O’Connell who took over for Plummer at the end of the season. The QB battle will be fierce and whoever is under center on 9/5 will have certainly earned the job.

The last big question mark moving forward is the major coaching change that took place early in the offseason. 3 year DC Nick Holt was not brought back and Purdue hired Bob Diaco a former Notre Dame DC looking to shake things up and get more out of the defense. The defense did indeed do Purdue no favors as they routinely broke down in pass coverage and generated very few turnovers. The major change will be switching from a 4-3 base defense to Diaco’s 3-4. I will cover this in a future article in more detail, but I think this year could be another year where the defense struggles as the players adjust to the new system.

As mentioned a few times, this is just a quick tease about the 2020-21 Purdue Football season. We will be going into more depth as time goes on. With no sports happening currently, I think some analysis of last year’s (2019) games may be in order so we can find more points of emphasis to focus on moving into 2020-21.

As always, Boiler Up, Hammer Down, Hail Purdue!