When the season started Purdue fans looked at this Northwestern game as a potential win. The Wildcats were not held in high esteem and if a really, really bad Purdue team could take them to overtime last season when surely a better Purdue team couldpotentially get a win in 2025.
As we saw, that was not the case. The Purdue offense had by far its worst outing of the season in a 19-0 loss to Northwestern that wasn’t even that close.
The numbers are just staggering, really. On Purdue’s first three offensive
possessions the Boilermakers gained just 35 yards in 13 plays plays. Around that, the Wildcats gained 200 yards in 21 plays and scored 13 points. They held the ball for 17 minutes and 29 seconds in those three possessions compared to 7 minutes and two seconds for Purdue. A 13 point lead in the second quarter is far from an insurmountable lead in college football, but on this day, it might as well have been 113-0.
Once again, Purdue machine-gunned its own shoes, which seems to be what this team does this year. It has to play absolutely perfect to have a shot at winning, and today it was not perfect. Even when given a gift of a poorly executed fake punt that gave the Boilermakers the ball with great field position at midfield with just under two minutes left and down 13-0 Purdue did absolutely nothing with it. That was a golden chance to seize momentum, cut the lead in half, then take the second half kickoff and get right back in the game.
Nope. Purdue went 3-and-out, gaining just 7 yards. It didn’t even consider going for it on 4th and three when it needed a spark.
The second half was not much better. Northwestern gave Purdue a pair of turnovers, failed on a two-point conversion, and missed a field goal. With any sort of offense the Boilermakers could have still won the game. Instead, Purdue gave three turnovers right back and turned it over on downs three more times.
Northwestern is decent. but not a great team. This was a very winnable game, but not only did the offense do nothing all day, it did nothing very quickly and let the Wildcats dominate time of possession. It is a shame that the Purdue defense had a good day by its low standards, and it even doubled the number of turnovers it has created on the season, but it didn’t matter. The offense just was really, really bad.
And there are a lot of questions about that right now, too. Purdue was dominant on the ground last week, but went away from it with a chance to grind Minnesota down last week and it cost them a win. Today nothing ever got going. Even when the Boilers did hit on a big play to Corey Smith it ended in a fumble.
The final numbers look better than they were for most of the game. Northwestern only outgained Purdue 364-305, but 188 of those yards for the Boilermakers came in the fourth quarter with the game decided. Even then, Purdue couldn’t put points on the board.
There really are no answers at this point. Purdue looked signfiicantly better than last year in the first three games of the season and if not for the three red zone turnovers against USC it might have started 3-0. It was encouraging, and even the Illinois game was one where the Boilers jsut made too many mistakes while it still looked competitive.
The offense has now scored 3 points in the last six quarters of football and it pretty appalling in the red zone (if it can get that far). The remaining schedule is brutal, as well. The Boilers aren’t winning at home agaisnt Rutgers with the ay it is playing now, and the injury to Ryan Browne has the offense even more in flux. The remaining four games are only two road games in difficult venues in Michigan and Washington, then there are two home games against the two teams ranked No. 1 and No. 2 after this week’s coming poll.
Purdue is staring an 18-game Big Ten losing streak in the face if it can’t get a win over Rutgers, and a 3-21 two-season run is just about as bad as it can get. This is a team that is somehow looking worse each and every week, and the “easy” portion of thee schedule is long done.
There is a lot more I can say on that, but now is not the time. The 2025 season is effectively over, so the team has five games to build towards… something, I guess, in 2026. It is just hard to get excited about a team that looks utterly lost, especially at a time when the financial investment in the program is, shall we say, lacking compared to our peers. If Purdue enters year 3 of the 18 team Big Ten at 0-18 since the league expanded that means the program has been lapped by the rest of the conference, and it will only get worse without significant changes.
