Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/295452
GoldanDBlack express • volume 24, express 27 • 4 I f you watched Purdue's spring game Saturday, you may not have walked away feeling you saw a football team that's all that much bet- ter than the one that didn't beat — barely even compet- ed with, really — a Division I opponent last season. The weather was im- maculate Saturday, but the football, not so much, about as aesthetically pleasing as the winter-ravaged Ross-Ade Stadium field that was as much a sort of khaki color as it was green. Understandable. The football, that is. You're going to read in this issue about how any judgments made off spring games are inher- ently flawed for more than one reason. But it does bear repeating: Draw no con- clusions. This was a 1-11 football team, down a se- nior class, then split in half to accommodate the event's game format. In other words, those vegetables were spread awfully thin around that plate. So a team with a severe deficiency on the offensive line comes into its spring game with only 10 on the whole roster, five go one way and five the other, and all of them play, a lot. So the 10th-best offensive lineman on a team with few it should feel comfortable putting on the field in the first place not only played, but played every snap. Against the best the defense has to offer. Not pretty. You get the picture, hopefully. I digress. People want to know if Purdue will be better this season. The answer is an unequivocal yes, for three reasons. The Boilermakers can't possibly be worse than they were during their painful transi- tional season in Year 1 under a new staff, the square-peg, round-hole principle clearly be- ing in place. And it can't possibly be as bad. So looking at this from a semantic point of view, if Purdue can't be worse, and almost certainly not as bad, then it will be better. Didn't say how much better, but just better. Its players have played. Purdue didn't throw the season, per se, by rolling out every able-bodied youngster it could find last sea- son, but now that it did, there should be some benefits to reap. The Boilermakers played a freshman quarterback last season. What's harder than playing a freshman quarterback? How about playing a freshman quarterback who's throwing to freshmen receivers? On offense, at least, that's no longer the case, though no one's ready to anoint this the 1998 Purdue offense. But a touchdown ev- ery now and then would be a good start and should be a reasonable expectation. Experience goes both ways. Players have played, but also, coaches have coached those players. Why it took so long to get a better read on personnel, I don't know, but the side- line now seems to have a better idea of what it's working with. Can't hurt. A rising tide lifts all boats. In this case, that tide is a schedule that eases up considerably. It's all relative. There's no "easy" schedule in the Big Ten, and nothing's ever "easy" after a team loses all but one of the dozen games it plays in a season. But Purdue trades a road game at Cincinnati and a meeting with BCS-participant Northern Illinois for home games with Central Michigan and dreadful Western Michigan. Beat those teams and Southern Illinois and that's three wins heading into a Big Ten schedule in which Iowa, Illinois, Northwestern and maybe Indiana might be vulnerable. All huge ifs, I know, for a team that didn't look like it could beat any- body at the end of last season. But the schedule will at least give Purdue the chance it didn't have last season, as it turned out. How much Purdue can take ad- vantage depends on how much it has improved. Time will tell. Purdue will be better, but still faces some potentially crippling questions. It's more experienced, but still young on offense. Its offensive line is the greatest personnel question on the roster. A porous defense from a year ago gets younger up front before it gets older. As far as improvement goes, spring is never an end-all, be-all indicator. And it most certainly was not this spring. But nevertheless Purdue should be bet- ter. j Neubert can be contacted at BNeubert@GoldandBlack.com unlocking more tomorrows our mission is discovery our goal is to cure cancer. cancerresearch.purdue.edu Dorothy Teegarden, PhD Professor, Foods and Nutrition f r o m e d i t o r b r i a n n e u b e r t time will tell