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With a 46-7 beat down of the Illini, the Cannon remains in West Lafayette. For those of you who ran the Boilermaker Half Marathon along with me, watching the game provided a nice thing to do while resting some tired legs. It also places Purdue at 2-1 in conference, a half game and a tie breaker back from Northwestern (3-1 in conference, 3-3 overall) in the table and tied with Wisconsin (4-2 overall) and Iowa (5-1 overall) [1] in second. How did this happen? Well... A (Santa) Lovie Smith Offense Coming into the game, I was most scared of Illinois's rushing offense moving the ball effectively. That failed to happen: Figure 1: Illinois Individual Rushing Statistics [2,3] The Boilermaker defense shutdown the Illinois rushing offense, which has averaged 6.09 yards/rush over the season. This came from containing quarterback AJ Bush, who managed only 3.33 yards/rush compared to his 6.30 season average. Given the Boilers had struggled to contain mobile quarterbacks through t

No one got arrested at Where Else. Good. Time for the Illinois preview... B-Word Update But first, with updated S&P+ ratings, comes updated game probabilities, and of course, a pleasant reminder of the fact Southwest airlines provides free checked bags to wherever your holiday will take you. Whether or not that includes Purdue football. Figure 1: Purdue Win Distribution [1] Santa Lovie is Coaching Right Now For those of you who have not seen the beard Lovie Smith is currently gracing Champaign with, well, check it out in all of its Claus-like greatness: https://www.yardbarker.com/college_football/articles/twitter_enraptured_by_lovie_smiths_magnificent_beard/s1_12680_27323777 The Illini are 3-2, with wins over Kent State, Western Illinois, and Rutgers. That would be the best start the former Bears and Bucs coach has had at Illinois, after going 1-4 in 2016 and 2-3 (the only two wins that year) in 2017. The Illini have had success running the ball, with 6.35 yards/rush

Nebraska has been quite bad in Scott Frost's first season. We beat them handily, which continues the level of play the Boilers have put together in the past couple weeks. That is, of course, great. However, looking at the stats, there are a few worrying issues that present themselves, despite the very positive 42-28 score line. The Good, the Bad, and the Frustrating of the Passing Game Once again, Brohm leaned on the arm of David Blough to deliver a victory, with 54.43% of plays passes (FBS average: 47.02%). Blough continued to deliver. In both yards per dropback (7.81) and yards per completion (13.12), Blough exceeded the FBS average (6.72 yards/dropback and 12.43 yards/completion). He definitely has his offensive line to thank: the Huskers recorded a single sack on 43 dropbacks, for a sack rate of 2.33%. Nebraska's 7.69% sack rate on the season is above average (6.57%), and they were unable to get any pressure on Blough [1,2,3]. Figure 1: Purdue Individual Passing

Well, there we have it. Win number one of the season. That it comes in week four, to a ranked opponent, is odd in a number of ways. The first is, per S&P+, Purdue's second order wins (i.e., wins expected based on how a team plays) is 2.8, with the way Purdue played anticipating a record closer to 3-1 than 1-3. The second is that Purdue's easiest opponent was Eastern Michigan (74th), their second easiest Northwestern (60th), with Boston College as the second best team Purdue has played at 41st. Purdue, 45th in S&P+ beat them by 17, with the neutral field point spread 0.6 points in BC's favor. The Boiler's toughest opponent so far was Mizzou, currently 27th in S&P+. The third is that while BC is run focused team, running the ball 63.23% of plays, they have a stellar 9.21 yards per dropback (FBS average: 6.75), fed off the play action game. While Purdue's relatively stronger run defense could be trusted to shutdown the Eagle's rushing attack, it would h

This is a game, going in, I expected us to be absolutely destroyed in, maybe able to keep the score in check with ball control with our strong run game. Instead, we couldn't run the ball, and kept it close with a very effective passing game. There was also an electric atmosphere in Ross-Ade, which shocks me every time I see it, but definitely makes me very happy. While it was another painful, late game loss, I felt somehow positive walking out of Ross-Ade Stadium. And still in someways positive looking at stats this week. This week, there were some unexpected events related to our cat that came up that took most of the time I typically use to write this article. However, I did get a number of charts ready, so do with them what you will. Figure 1: Drive Stats for Purdue and Mizzou Figure 2: Mizzou Individual Passing Statistics Figure 3: Purdue Individual Passing Statistics Figure 4: Purdue Individual Rushing Statistics Figure 5: Mizzou Individual Rushing Stati

Whelp, that happened. There is a lot that didn't go well. Some of that is due to the weather. Some of it was due to bad play. Some of it was due to the fact that Eastern Michigan, despite being a historically challenged programs, has become a decent football team. But First, Some Weird Optimism  While preparing the statistics for this post, among the major issues was a very strange, very positive stat. There is probably a factor of small sample size size here, but Purdue is currently leading the nation in yards per rush (as usual, with sacks excluded): Figure 1: Top 20 Rushing Offenses in FBS [1] And it really isn't that close. The 0.63 yards per rush that separate second place Memphis and Purdue is greater than the separation between Memphis and eighth place Central Florida. For all of these teams, having an excellent rushing offense powers an above average performance in terms of yards per play. This is true even for teams that (like Purdue) have struggled to thro