Purdue Football: 3 takeaways from impressive win over Maryland

2. Maryland just isn’t very good

There might be cause for some concern in College Park. The Terrapins have lost three of their last four games. In their last two losses, the Terps have been outscored 99-14. We were all fooled by that 63-20 win by Syracuse.

Josh Jackson looked outstanding and the defense was more physical than the Orange. They haven’t put together a performance anywhere close to that this season. The offense has been out of sync save the Rutgers game, and the defense has been both run and passed on. Jackson hasn’t acclimated himself to the offense very well, and the offensive line has been shaky against talented defenses.

Saturday was a similar story. Down a starting quarterback, the Purdue defense stood up and played stingy defense. The Terps had 92 of their 171 rushing yards on two plays. Purdue did an outstanding job of not allowing the Terrapins to sustain drives in this game. Maryland was not in sync at all offensively, and it was more than just not having their starting quarterback.

The Maryland defense was as advertised: terrible. Jack Plummer completed 80 percent of his passes against a soft zone defense, and there was little resistance from the pass rush. The run game even got over 100 yards in a complementary role. We see Mike Locksley has a lot of work to do at Maryland.