Purdue goes now to a venue where they often lose and sometimes are crushed even when they are decent. They are not currently decent. Purdue has lost to Wisconsin the past nine times they’ve played. The last seven times, Wisconsin has won by an average margin of four touchdowns. Four touchdowns is a lot. How do you plan to fix this, Coach Shoop?

Thank you, Coach. That’ll do.

 

Dave (zlionsfan):

Halfway into the season, we are faced with the possibility that the best of 2015, and perhaps of Darrell Hazell's tenure at Purdue, has already passed. The Good Guys lost by four touchdowns to a team that is, in theory, one of their peers: a school that doesn't mind puttering around .500 and making the occasional bowl game, no win necessary. (The Gophers haven't won a bowl since 2004 and haven't been to the Rose Bowl since the '61 season, but they also have six national championships, so ... uh ... maybe not a peer.)

Up next is a school with the same number of titles as Purdue, but a much better shot of changing that, even if this is not the year they'll do it. In another year, this would be a Badgers team ripe for the picking, with yet another new coach trying to plug the leaks the departure of the last one left (it's only a matter of time until Alvarez takes over himself and buries the remains of the program he once built) and not being quite as successful.

This, however, is the year in which a 1-5 record and a total lack of competitiveness against power-5 schools with coaches who care leads Purdue's head coach to say that they don't need to make major changes. Right then. I'll save the rest for this weekend, when I will be hanging out with fellow Boilers and friends from other schools, watching bonfires, and wondering what it would have been like if my dad had sent me to Michigan instead of Purdue. If you have another favorite team, I recommend you lean on them during these troubled times. If not, get one. We'll call you when it's safe to watch TV again.

Wisconsin 41 Purdue 6

P.S. I accidentally typed 51-5 when I was entering my prediction. Maybe I should have left it.

 

J Money:

I knew they’d find a way to kick us all in the collective junk last week. We were all too excited based on two quarters of football where MSU was disinterested. Now, don’t get me wrong – Purdue will still find a way to reel some of us back in. I don’t think they’re going 1-11 this year. I think they’ll win a game or two and it’s still possible that the glimmers of hope we saw against MSU, Marshall, Bowling Green, maybe the first half of VT…. there’s a chance that those glimmers will come together and the stars will align and Purdue will knock off a better team than, say, Illinois. (A fun part would be seeing how quickly Mike Riley is fired if the Huskers lost to lowly Purdue.)

But it won’t be happening this weekend. This isn’t even a “prove me wrong, boys” kind of game. I have literally zero hope. Oh, sure, I do think David Blough is a good QB with potential. I did see him do some decent things in his first two starts. But Wisconsin is a place where Purdue football goes to die.

Sure, Wisconsin isn’t as good as they’ve been in recent years. Paul Chryst may not be all that good a head coach. Melvin Gordon is gone. I get alllllll of that.

It doesn’t matter. Purdue will lose and lose painfully. I don’t ever tell people not to watch, but I feel confident in telling you to find something else to do on Saturday. If something good happens, I’ll let you know to tune in.

Wisconsin 44 Purdue 10

 

Handsome Mike Henry (rrt1):

This team is much worse than we could have anticipated. And at 1-5, we're beyond the point where we can reasonably expect things to be any different this season. This team is what they are, and what they are isn't good. The Minnesota game offered an opportunity for this team to show that they really were different, maybe not that they could compete with the big boys of the B1G, but maybe that they could beat a mid-to-low level team and at least be respectable. Keep in mind, Minny was averaging less than 15 points a game headed into last week, and they ended up scoring more points than they had in the previous three weeks combined. They pretty much did whatever they wanted with Purdue's defense, until they got bored and put in the reserves.

So as hopeful as we are for signs that things have changed, it is crystal clear now that we're seeing nothing but more of the same bad football that we saw the previous two seasons. This team can't get out of its own way on offense, and can't stop even the most feeble of offenses on defense. Frankly, it would be a marvel to watch these two units play each other in a game situation - a stoppable force meets a moveable object, destined to end in a 0-0 tie.

Ah but here we are, and here we're forced to stay and pay for sins unknown, like some football purgatory that feels more like football hell. We're not firing Hazell, at least for another year and a half, and apparently we're not going to fire any of our coordinators either. More of the same will yield more of the same. Well, maybe it'll yield worse.

Anyway, Wisconsin. Purdue will lose, and Purdue will lose badly. As they will probably do for the rest of the season. Illinois' best win is against Nebraska. Indiana's is against Wake Forest. Purdue's...Indiana State. What confidence should I have that Purdue will play respectable football at any point again this season, to say nothing of playing well enough to beat a conference foe? They will lose, and they will lose badly. Wash, rinse, repeat. Six more times.

Wisky: 35 Purdue: 13

 

Aneesh the Swamy:

Hi.

In 2008, Purdue had a chance to build on the small amount of success Joe Tiller built during his time in West Lafayette. Purdue could have invested heavily at that time, and showed real progress to reinvent the program for the modern era. Morgan Burke could have put the cherry on his Boilermaker legacy.

Instead, we went with this guy:

Cool.

I’ll write more about the teardown of this program post-Tiller next week, because right now things are depressing as hell and this is what I choose to do in my free time.

As for this Wisconsin game…well, did you watch last week against Minnesota? How many people are actually reading this after that utter no-show in a critical Hazell-era game? Nobody would be crazy enough to read a pregame post on a site dedicated to a program that apparently has no interest in winning, right? What if I just typed gibberish right here? Nobody would notice, right? Olly olly oxen free. Qdoba is trash, and their queso is a way to mask trash food. I refuse to eat breakfast foods between 2pm and midnight. If I could pick any superpower I’d probably pick flight, but I would probably rather be fluent in every language on earth. I watched every minute of the Indiana Fever’s playoff run, and think Tamika Catchings deserves a statue before Reggie Miller. I may or may not have a belly button tattoo in honor of Reggie Miller. All that fight we saw Purdue put up against MSU vanished into thin air. The adjustments we saw from the team at halftime seem to be a complete fluke. Literally nothing has gone right for this program since 2011, which is an entire high school class ago. No quarterbacks or defensive ends have emerged from the late Hope/early Hazell era. And…I’m not sure how long I can defend Hazell just because I love his demeanor.

Anyway…let’s check in on Tom Fornelli’s Bottom 25 on CBSsports.com:

The teams below Purdue: UTEP, Louisiana-Monroe, New Mexico State, Troy, SMU, Texas State, Wyoming, Miami (OH), Idaho, UCF, Fresno State, Kansas, and North Texas.

Those are our peers, and it’s been said by more than one person that few Power 5 coaches, and no Big Ten coaches, would trade places with Darrell Hazell right now.

Purdue will get stomped by Wisconsin, because that’s what Wisconsin does to Purdue. And if they don’t, I can’t believe in anything unless I see it for, let’s say, two weeks in a row. So, basically, I’m not sure I can be happy after this weekend either way.

I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of “killing a person’s soul”. Worst football situation in the Big Ten, and no changes are on the horizon. Thanks, Morgan.

Wisconsin 48 Purdue 12

 

B-Dowdy-Dowd:

I'm not sure putting a ton of thought into these things is good for my health or anything else for that matter.

Here's what I know: Purdue players and coaches alike thought they were going to win last week...and that led to Purdue getting pistol whipped by a depleted, yet well-coached team.

This week, following the shellacking, Hazell said no major changes were in order, and Shoop blamed everything on poor execution (I didn't hear Hudson's explanation for why his squad made Minny's Freshman RB look like Marion Barber.

I don't think Paul Chryst was a good hire for Wisconsin...I think it was a small time, desperate hire made by an AD who must be horrible to work with (based on conjecture)...That said, I think I could coach Sconnie's OLine to make holes and design plays to help the Badger's second string RB make hay against Purdue's quickly depleting defense.

Wisconsin 37 Purdue 10