At one point during Saturday’s Ohio State – Wisconsin game, the Aflac (advertise, please) trivia question came on about which Big Ten team was the last to defeat three top 10 conference teams in a season. The answer was 2003 Michigan, to which surprise was elicited to know that Purdue was one of those teams.
We all miss the Joe Tiller era. None more than actual Purdue misses the Joe Tiller era. https://t.co/OjEOQFMBUD
— The Student Section (@TheStudentSect) October 16, 2016
It feels like forever ago that the Boilermakers were a fixture in and around the top 25, and Joe Tiller was one of the more underrated and underappreciated coaches in his time, but since he’s been gone, Purdue is down, and badly. Darrell Hazell is the second coach to be hired and fired from the program since Tiller’s departure, and the Boilers are back to square one. Heck, if there’s a square zero, they might be back there.
I’ll own it saying that I thought Hazell would succeed at Purdue and was a good hire. The timing of the firing seems a bit sketchy, but those are decisions for people smarter than the rest of us, I suppose.
Purdue didn’t gain traction under Hazell for a number of reasons, though he probably should have gotten the rest of the season to prove that (he lasted 3.5 years on a 6-year deal) rather than being let go this week. Unless there’s some sort of impropriety we don’t know about or a coach they desperately want to get a look at as a head coach (can’t imagine there is) on the staff, the move at this time makes little sense.
But it didn’t work out, and these things (in no particular order) contributed to it not working out.
1. Hazell didn’t inherit a Big Ten level roster, but didn’t move forward in improving it
If you swing back to the first year in Hazell’s tenure after taking over for Danny Hope, Purdue was stunningly bad. Their lone win was over Indiana State, and they needed a gadget special teams play within that game to get it. They failed to score 10 points four times, were shut out twice, and only eclipsed 24 points once … in a 20-point loss to Indiana. So the haul was going to be heavy.
Purdue never really recruited well after that, though. Over 50 percent of his first class either were buried on the bench, transferred, or never made it to the program. His second class didn’t fare much better. You simply cannot win in big time college football without either finding a niche and recruiting to it or getting big time players in your program. Joe Tiller did the first. So yeah, more Joe Tiller.
2. The football facilities still hold Purdue back
The Purdue Football Performance Facility is going to be really cool, probably, but “will be” doesn’t help the former head coach. When it comes to recruiting, facilities matter, and it’s tough to recruit against the likes of the rest of the Big Ten, some of which have world class facilities and recent upgrades that diminish what Purdue currently has. Purdue is investing $65 million in the upgrades, while rival Indiana is pumping in nearly $170 million into their own upgrades. These things matter to recruits, and we already did the whole, “recruiting is the lifeblood of the program” thing in the last bullet point.
3. Hazell was never able to find a quarterback
It’s an oddity unlike any other that had Hurricane Matthew not jammed the East Coast two weeks ago, SEC heavyweights Florida and LSU would have played against one another with former Purdue quarterbacks starting for both teams. The optics of guys that couldn’t find success at Purdue but can start for teams with reasonable expectations of being in the CFB Playoffs tend to trend that Purdue’s staff didn’t do a great job getting the most out of them. Austin Appleby took a shot at the Hazell-led staff earlier in the season about the coaching staff truly caring about players, and whether or not that’s one guy who didn’t feel the staff did or it’s more systemic of how many players feel, that’s hard to tell. But the fact is, Purdue just couldn’t find consistency at the most important position in the game and one that can cover up for other warts on the roster. And again, both were starting in the SEC, so … take what you want from that, but the overall optics are, “the talent was there, and the coaching staff didn’t get enough of it out of them.”
4. Purdue never found a vision under Hazell
I hate to keep going back to the Tiller well, but the reality is that no matter what type of program you are, an Ohio State, an Alabama, or whatever, you need some sort of identity about you. That can change dramatically based on the coaching staff, or it can be the same damn thing no matter who is roaming the sidelines (see: Wisconsin). You never really felt like you knew what Purdue was. Tiller gave them the identity of a high-octane, spread offense team where he could accurately pick out and recruit players fit for that particular system. Hope couldn’t carry that on. And Hazell never developed his own brand while there. They just continually looked like a team trying to get over the hump in any way possible, but not committed to a certain style of play that you can confidently recruit to and expect success from.
5. Hazell simply didn’t get the time to get it done
It’s hard to tell what Purdue expected in their heart of hearts when they hired the guy, but they had to know the talent wasn’t there and when you sign someone to a 6-year deal, you assume that there’s patience that goes along with that. This season was a mixed bag of “horrible” and “improving,” but three of Hazell’s nine wins at Purdue had already occurred this year and in spite of getting flogged by Maryland and Iowa, it wasn’t a horrid stretch to think this team could have made a bowl game. It seems at some point prior to this season, barring something very spectacular, it was decided that Hazell wasn’t the guy to lead this program forward. At that point, it becomes unfair to roll him out there thinking he and the team have a chance.
