Express Word: Purdue’s football possibilities

The Express Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s edition, we discuss quarterback drama at all levels of football, Purdue basketball’s newcomers and more..

This week, we change our years-long three-subject format to a more flexible one.

ON A BUNCH OF RANDOM THINGS

As a new year begins for football and basketball, just wanted to get out in front of some points that tend to drive perceptions.

Quarterback success is organizational success
If Ryan Browne is going to succeed this season after Purdue’s other portal newcomers failed in the spring — heavy language, I know, but hard to look at it otherwise — then it’s as much up to the coaching staff and supporting ensemble to position him to do so. That’s the nature of QB play in general as there are very few out there who can just put a team on their backs and win. The Browne we saw last season has to prove he can drop back and make important throws. Otherwise, his very particular set of skills have to be amplified by scheme and play-calling and his deficiencies hidden by those same things. That’s true of all quarterbacks, really, but especially so here.

Hudson Card was a egregious organizational failure at Purdue. Truth be told, he would have better off football-wise transferring out for his senior year. Browne will need to be an organizational success.

Pass-protection is scheme
Seems like it’s generally thought that protecting the quarterback is solely the responsibility of the large people back-pedaling, then engaging the on-coming large people before them to deter their progress long enough for the quarterback to do something.

That’s a big part of it, yes, but just as big a part is what Harrell specifically never seemed to grasp. You slow down pass-rushers by making them think, but attacking the spots they are vacating, by changing tempos, by throwing laterally, but throwing quickly out of short drops and by using their aggressiveness against them with draws and screens and such.

If your offensive tackles are good enough to handle Abdul Carter all day, cool. Five-step-drop until your heart’s content.

But most aren’t. And at Purdue, it’s generally been not just the Abdul Carters who are the problem.

Coordinator and head coach are different jobs
This has long been a real misperception in sports conversations. You have to start somewhere in assessing head coaching potential, but being an effective coordinator does not mean you will be an effective head coach. It’s about the personality, decision-making, philosophy setting and the ability to guide a massive organization. This is one of the million differences between Purdue football the past few years and Purdue now. Barry Odom’s experience is a necessary change to this program — that he’s won in the roster-overhaul era is a big, big deal — and something Purdue never should have deviated from.

Everything is connected
“Complementary football” does not mean “being good at everything.” That helps, sure, but complementary football is playing offense is a way that supports the defense (possessing the ball, eating clock, limiting turnovers, etc.) and vice versa. The topic began being beaten to death in this space as soon as Purdue hired an Air Raid coordinator to pair with a defensive-focused head coach. Ryan Walters then drained all the meaning from the term last year by mis-using it at every turn.

Same principle in basketball, and this will be important this season: Great defense ends with a defensive rebound and great offense starts with a defensive rebound. Size changes everything for Purdue now. But defense is offense and offense is defense.

ON PURDUE POSSIBILITIES

“Likely” and “possible” are two dIfferent things and when it comes to the possibility of Purdue having an Indiana-like season, “likely” would be an extremely ambitious suggestion to make. A non-zero chance, sure, but not far off.

That doesn’t mean Purdue can’t swing back hard this season and experience enough success to sit back in December and call Year 1 under Barry Odom a win.

Last year has nothing to do with anything. Truth be told, bringing back some anger might not have been the worst thing ever. Hopefullly for Purdue, CJ Madden, Devin Mockobee and Browne got pretty sick of their team getting its head kicked in for an entire season and channel that distaste productively now. The drawn-out quarterback situation was not a really positive indicator, but outside of that, why not Purdue? And by asking that question, I don’t mean CFP. I mean six wins and a trip to Kohl’s Cash Bowl. That would be success by any measure.

Look, Odom has done this before. He’s built winning teams from scratch in a matter of months on two different occasions. Program-building is different now and Team Odom has proven its adaptability chops.

Second, Purdue gets opportunities for early success now. Seasons aren’t made in September, but they can be ruined. Example A: Jeff Brohm’s team losing at Nevada in its 2019 opener. Example B: Notre Dame coming in pissed off last season and taking it out on the Boilermakers. Those two examples really blew up their respective seasons. That those teams cracked down the middle at the first sign of trouble was an indictment of those teams and their leadership, yes, but early season momentum does matter, probably more so now than ever as coaches are building these planes mid-takeoff.

Now, if Purdue beats Ball State and SIU, it may feel OK about itself just in time to host troubled USC, right around the point in the fall where a team of all newcomers should start to show the improvement that should come with experience as a unit. Why not Purdue in that game? Then, October sets up OK. There are no easy Big Ten schedules, but that four-game slate is as friendly as it gets. Get a couple of those and, hey, you never know.

Once you win a few, upsets are born from confidence.

Further, the unknown is the undercurrent of all this. Odom has enough of his guys with him to know what he’s got at certain positions, and maybe some of these other players they bought out of the portal are legitimately good, winning Big Ten players. And maybe some other people on the schedule missed on more.

It’s the great differentiator now: Who got more right than wrong? It’s a coin flip. Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon, Michigan, they’re going to be just fine. They’re always going to have better players than everyone else. But Schools 6-18, they’re exposed, at the mercy of boom-or-bust transfer variance.

Should be a fun season.

And there’s nothing that says Purdue can’t partake in the enjoyment.

Step 1 is just getting back to being solid and sound.

The waters have been muddied by complex offenses, intricate blocking schemes, tempo, “exotic” defense, creative special teams and the like, but at its most basic level, football is a pretty simple game.

It’s easier said than done but the team that throws and catches well, that blocks and tackles better than the other guys, that tries hard and that keeps mistakes within reason, that team is going to succeed. Everything else springs from these basics.

Purdue has missed on a lot of those pillars for years now.

ANOTHER SEPTEMBER DYNAMIC

• In buy games like the ones Purdue will play the next weeks, do not forget about the try-out factor with these visiting opponents. All due respect to Ball State and Southern Illinois, but they know the deal. These are opportunities for every player on their teams with eligibility remaining to put portal tape out there against a power-conference school. It sucks for the majority of college football, but the big ones have always eaten the little ones and now it just takes on new meaning.

Last year at this time, Purdue’s only win of last season came against an Indiana State team that really didn’t put forth a credible strategic effort to try to win, presumably to keep healthy in advance of its conference games, but also I’m sure out of concern of any of their guys playing too well. But anyone who saw that game and didn’t pick up on the take-your-check-and-go-home undercurrent to that game had their eyes closed all afternoon.

The “they didn’t want us” factor has always been real when MAC teams have visited the Big Ten, but now it all takes on a bit of a different feel. Coaches may have reason to hold some things back, but the players have every reason to play like their lives, and bank accounts, depend on it.

BREAKING: BROADCAST CRISIS THEATER ENDS PREDICTABLY

So, as you have probably heard by now, FOX and YouTube TV have heroically reached a temporary injunction in advance of their artificial, made-up 5 p.m. deadline applied to their purposefully publicized pillow fight over carriage fees.

Do we have to do this every year? Again, live sports is being held hostage amidst the saber-rattling of another carriage impasse. FOX, of course, is the Big Ten’s closest broadcast partner so it’s Big Ten fans who were put at the center of yet another just-in-time-for-kickoff bomb threat.

It is tiresome that these things become so routine when we all know for damn certain they will reach terms in time for the season. These are all just transparent shakedowns to turn public sentiment to one side or the other, to rile people up, like wedge issues only coming up for debate in election years. Chances are, Average Joe, when given the choice between one multi-billion-dollar company and another multi-billion-dollar company, will side with whichever one allows him or her to see the game without having to subscribe to a different streaming platform.

It is a reminder how live sports, and the passion it involves, can not only be monetized to eight-figure degrees, but weaponized when someone needs an upper hand.

You’re the pawns in this. Both sides want you mad, just before they come together to save the day just before their cosmetic deadline. Hooray for the people who last week were manipulating us but now care so much about the customer that they crossed the aisle in the spirit of cooperation. Hail the benevolent conquering heroes.

I predicted a 4:58 p.m. resolution. The tweet came at 5:02.

We’ve reached a short-term extension with Fox to avoid service disruption for YouTube TV subscribers while we work on a new agreement. We're committed to advocating on behalf of our members and will keep you posted on our progress

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) August 27, 2025

It’s crap. People plan their weekends around this stuff and there are undoubtedly people still making decisions whether to show up on game day to watch live. And, the reality is there are people who are overwhelmed by streaming options and the breadth of what’s available where and when who don’t want to be thinking about this stuff three days before a game. That’s not to mention those who aren’t perpetually online.

(You want to really be insulted? Amidst this Cuban Missile Crisis, YouTube TV sent a message to customers telling them that if FOX service was disrupted, they’d be offered a $10 credit, couch-cushion money. This service that keeps raising its prices every year is telling you: Hey, sorry you missed that Ohio State-Texas game, but how ’bout a Fresca? On us.)

As the recipient of roughly a billion “what channel is the game on” messages at 6:57 p.m. before 7 p.m. basketball games in my life, I speak to you with unique pespective into viewers’ habits.

It would be lovely if just for once any of these entities would foresake that extra two dollars per subscription for the sake of the subscriber.

They won’t. See you next year. Same bat time. Same bat channel.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• Purdue’s making another big ask here of its fans to keep showing up. They were honestly the only positive thing to come out of last season’s nuclear winter. But it’s important, man. Purdue needs people to keep showing up and as importantly to keep pumping money into the program. Purdue can’t get where it wants to go without them/you.

New leadership generally brings with it an excitement bump, but Purdue’s put its fans through a lot over the past decade and the climate now of all these unknown players is a different deal.

Saturday will be an interesting temperature check.

Remember how important, too, vibrant football weekends are for most other sports’ recruiting. Football Saturdays are really campus sports culture in pill form for any recruit who may happen through town.

• On Big Ten expansion talk: Much ado about nothing, in my opinion, in the short term. Notre Dame has no reason to join. North Carolina is the prize and the school that would be worth overpaying for, though Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State would never allow it. Virginia is a valued commodity. But there’s not going to be any movement any time soon on any of this, I wouldn’t think. I will repeat: Guys, don’t assume those television-money numbers are going up significantly next time around.

• I love Taylor Swift. I’m serious. I think she’s a great songwriter and performer and a hell of a businessperson, kind of the ultimate American success story. I consider myself a very good writer and the best songwriters are those who make me feel like a drooling 4-year-old writing on a wall with crayons. She’s one of like a dozen musicians I’d put in that category. But I’ll also say this in light of yesterday’s news: This is America. We don’t do royal weddings. I hope they are business-savvy enough to understand extravagance and over-exposure are great ways to turn people off.

As college sports powers-that-be have been desperately trying to show us for a generation now, golden gooses (geese?) are mortal.