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VOLUME 25, ISSUE 6 13 A Purdue offense that for years had been seeking an identity finally had one in 2014. Not that the Boilermakers parlayed their collective speed into as many wins as they'd, and you'd, have liked, but at least they had something, some- thing that put constant pressure on defenses, something that game plans could be built around, something that could be an advantage against most anyone when effectively applied. Yeah, the importance of speed to Purdue's offense last season really couldn't be overstated. In effect, Akeem Hunt, Raheem Mostert and Danny Anthrop were Pur- due's offense in more ways than one. Or, more specifically, their collec- tive defining physical gift was: Speed. Some fun with numbers: The Boilermakers scored on of- fense 49 times in 2014. Twenty-three of those scoring drives were made, aided or finished off by a play of 20 or more yards by one of the offense's three burners. Remove the low-hanging fruit of short-field scores from the numbers and it shows their big plays were crit- ical to more than half Purdue's ex- tended scoring possessions. Zero in on that three-game stretch in which Purdue played like a fringe bowl team — Illinois, Michigan State, Minnesota — and you see that 11 of its 16 scores were contributed to by big plays from one of those three. It should also be noted Hunt and Mostert combined for all of Purdue's rushing touchdowns of more than 25 yards and Anthrop and Hunt com- bined for virtually all its catches of 30 or more. Big plays by Hunt, Mostert and An- throp — and only big plays, mind you — accounted for 1,209 yards, or just under 30 percent of the Boilermak- ers' total output from scrimmage. Again, that's only the big plays, those of 20 yards or more. News flash: Purdue's best players were important. Imagine that. But what that trio last year repre- sented beyond three productive foot- ball players was an element, a foun- dation: Speed. Now, Hunt and Mostert are off seeing how theirs translates to the professional level. And while he has been fully cleared medically, Anthrop still must distance himself from an ACL injury. There's no one else on the depth chart who's going to win any sprint titles any time soon, barring an un- foreseen eruption from Trae Hart. The speed the last staff recruited is now gone. If there's one thing modern histo- ry has shown us, it's that to be good, Purdue must be good on offense. Now, without the bulk of its aggre- gate speed from last season, it has to find a different way to do it. Is a different kind of speed — tem- po — the answer? We'll see, but I'll say this: If such things go badly, possessions end with the same thud as a pigeon bouncing off your office window. Increased tempo is a challenge to execute and even when it's pulled off, it's not nearly as novel as it was just a few years ago. That's a slippery slope, but Purdue has to get creative. Purdue may be more physical this year, but can it be so physical that it'll be more physical than the Big Ten field? That'd be a pretty stark transformation from one season to the next. Unless it can find outstanding quarterback play — and "stable" seems like a more reasonable start- ing point for a program about to start a new quarterback from one open- ing day to the next for the seventh straight year — then Purdue has to have a thing, a base layer to construct its offense upon. Last year, speed was its thing and it helped the Boilermakers reach a level mid-season that they now will need to recapture and sustain. The inability to sustain it last season and close strong in winnable games was the difference between making mod- est gains in 2014 and calling the sea- son a resounding success. For Purdue to have that latter type of season now, it's going to have to score, sometimes a lot, and it's going to have to do it against good teams. And it's going to have to do in an entirely different way than it would have a year ago. j Neubert can be contacted at BNeubert@GoldandBlack.com Up To Speed? From Editor Brian Neubert