Purdue football: 3 takeaways from tough loss to Minnesota

1. Both defenses need major help

Purdue’s issue on defense is upfront. The Boilermakers don’t have a Big Ten-caliber defensive line. Not only are they light in the pants, they aren’t very active. Moreover, they aren’t deep.

The Boilermakers played a lot of zone even when Minnesota started using the RPO game to throw slant routs. You play zone for two reasons: You want to give your defensive linemen an opportunity to get home by making the opposing quarterback find the open space in the zone or you don’t have the size, speed or talent in the secondary to play man. The Boilers check both boxes.

They don’t put much pressure on the quarterback, and when they don’t play zone, they get burned in man. Just look at the plays they gave up against Minnesota.

Minnesota’s issue is depth. When you make so many big plays on offense, your defense can get tired late in games when you aren’t deep. You saw a tired defense in the fourth quarter for the Gophers. They were gassed.

They don’t have the talent depth to throw bodies at teams late in games. That might be their undoing, or you’ll see a lot of what you saw today against Purdue; jump out to big leads, and hold on late in games.