Purdue last won a football game on December 27, 2017. That’s a long time. They’re 0-3 this year and 0-3 at home. It’s been decades since they started 0-4 (not even Darrell Hazell did that) so it would be an ignominious distinction.

After the Mizzou game, the fans still appeared pretty excited — at least for an 0-3 team. But those three losses are by eight points total, so it’s not nuts to say to these guys if not for a few bad decisions, penalties and breaks, could legitimately be 3-0. They’re not and “if” gets you nowhere, I realize. My point is just that this isn’t a Hazell squad and the fight is clearly there. Let’s hope it continues and they upset a ranked team this weekend. Some of us think that will happen.

Aneesh: 0-4 would be discouraging, but the fight Purdue showed after being down 27-10 versus Mizzou is exactly why all of us were excited about the hiring of Jeff Brohm. Particularly after Brohm's 2017 Boilermakers re-engaged fans and excited prospective high-impact recruits, the 2018 Boilermakers' main task will be to keep that fight in the forefront of people's minds. Because, as Brohm said after the heartbreaking Mizzou loss:

"With where we're at, I'm not going to go down being conservative. I wanted to go down swinging."

Purdue's fight pays off this weekend. 

Purdue 33 BC 27

zlions fan (Dave): The bad news is that Purdue is 0-3; the good news is that they're the best 0-3 team in the country, and it's not even close (they're 54th in S&P+ this week, up 8 spots; UCLA is the next-best 0-3 team and is 85th). The Good Guys had a postgame winning percentage of 56.5% or better each game, which squares with what we saw on the field (played OK, caught some tough breaks). They're facing a "3-0" team that crushed a I-AA team and a team that probably belongs in I-AA before squeaking past Wake Forest on the road in a game where they outplayed the Demon Deacons but also got quite a bit of turnover luck.

BC is 17th in S&P+ in part because they blew out bad teams, which is a good indicator of a strong team. Purdue ... well, to be fair, Eastern Michigan still looks decent, but some of that is because of the win over the Boilers. In any event, the Good Guys haven't yet been able to nail down a W, and the Eagles (no, this week's Eagles, not the ones from two weeks ago) have the kind of offense that is likely to take away the hammer this week as well. Homecoming arrives early and the Boilers resume conference play 0-4.

Boston College 39 Purdue 26

Michael: Things are not going to plan this year and the difficulty of Purdue’s schedule has been drawn into sharp focus. I do think that BC might be a little overrated, but they are still a good team with some NFL talent. One has to worry that these tough losses might start to weigh on Purdue’s mental state. If they can stay positive and motivated there’s still time to turn this season around, but I don’t think that starts this week.

Purdue 31, BC 34

Boilerdowd: Unlike past awful starts, I have a ton of confidence that this coaching staff is trying to find their way to get this team back to winning. The offense found rhythm in a big way last week...the defense is a step behind. This week the defense takes a step forward and the youth movement on that side of the ball starts to show promise.

Sadly, the old moniker is valid again...The Spoilermakers are back. This program is back in the underdog role.

Purdue 33 BC 30

J Money: The Missouri game showed me that this team has plenty of fight left and knows they can still compete with anybody. If you don’t allow yourself to be swept into the pit of despair, you will realize that they are only 0-1 in conference and the rest of the Big Ten West (save Wisconsin) is a dumpster fire. You can still salvage some meaningful games from this season and potentially wreck some other teams’ seasons. It’ll still be fun and it starts this weekend.

Purdue 31, Boston College 27

BS Readers: The confidence continues. Unfortunately, it was in August. I should stop including these probably. Purdue 85%, BC 15%