Purdue Preview:
No Michigan, No Ohio State, No Problem

By Paul Smith
paul.smith@collegeblitz.com

PORTER, IND. — With passing phenom Kyle Orton holding clipboards and awaiting his turn on the Chicago Bears sideline and his favorite receiver, Taylor Stubblefield, also graduated, you'd think maybe a few sighs of relief could be heard from Purdue's Big Ten opponents.

Yeah, right? The snickers could be heard from State College to the Twin Cities.

After a nearly generation-long slumber through the late 1970s, '80s and much of the 1990s, there's one thing the Boilermakers have established in the eight-year run of Joe Tiller.

Consistency.

National ranking virtually every year. And a never-ending, maddening creative twist each season to what has become known as "Basketball on Grass."

So here are the Boilers, coming off a season most would term productive. Not at Purdue. No friggin' way.

Seven and five. But one quick glance at the results -- two two-point regular season losses at Iowa (23-21) and at home to Michigan (16-14) and two by a field goal to Wisconsin (17-14) at home and at Northwestern (13-10)...punctuated by a cliche-defying 27-23 Sun Bowl loss to Arizona State where the Sun Devils scored on the game's last play -- and you didn't need a series of taped replays to see how brutal 2004 had been for Tiller and Purdue.

Hugely controversial officiating calls. Mind-bending breaks that always seemed to result in the ball winding up in enemy hands. Five losses by 14 total points, enough to make many a sideliner cry.

But three's no crying in football, insists Tiller, who is 61-37 in the West Lafayette phase of his exceptional 14-season head coaching career (101-67-1 overall, including six years at Wyoming). Negative thoughts evaporate in nanoseconds around West Lafayette.

He looks at the pre-season No. 15 Boilers' schedule and already he sees where Purdue is 1-0 in the breaks department. "We've got Michigan and Ohio State right where we want 'em," he proclaimed at the Big Ten kickoff luncheon in Chicago to a chorus of giggles.

Off the schedule. Both the No. 4 Wolverines and sixth-ranked Buckeyes are absent this fall. What a very talented Penn State team, itching to return to the rankings, and which hosts O.S.U. Oct. 8, then travels to Michigan the following week, wouldn't do to trade places with the Boilers.

Despite the loss of the above-named bluechip players, plus a couple of key offensive linemen, there are compelling reasons why The Associated Press pollsters rank Purdue No. 15, with plenty of potential to rise.

But Tiller being Tiller, he emphasizes caution to even the most addicted to Old Gold and Black kool-aid.

That supposedly-softer schedule does include visits to ambitious Minnesota to open league play, plus Wisconsin -- where legendary Barry Alvarez is coaching his last season, and Penn State...enough said.

"Going to Tucson (the Boilers open at Arizona) will be a huge challenge for us," Tiller told Purdue beat guy Tom Kubat of the Lafayette Journal and Courier. "Opening the Big Ten with a game on the road against Minnesota, a team we haven't played in two years, will be huge.

"Going back to Madison and back-to-back (following the Wisconsin game with a visit to Penn State) is not something I look forward to. I don't know why we're going back there (to State College, where Purdue had to rally to hold off the Nittany Lions last fall, 20-13). There are ample challenges on this schedule."

Which prompted another thought from Tiller at his team's pre-season press day. "Our message to our team this fall -- they've heard this all summer long," Tiller told Kubat, "is 'Fellas, we better be thinking about who we are playing, not listening to other people reminding us about who we're not playing.'"

That said, though, the Boilers have plenty of reason for being upbeat, even though junior quarterback Brandon Kirsch will be pressed to find as productive a target as Taylor Stubblefield, who gained nation-wide respect in a typically wide-open Purdue passing offense.

Kirsch, who hails from the suddenly-rich quarterback eastern Pennsylvania hotbed that produced Michigan's Chad Henne and former Michigan State standout Jeff Smoker, may not quite measure up to Orton's celestial standards, but with Tiller's ability to recruit and develop receiving talent, should keep enemy defenses on their heels again.

Despite the potential for another high-powered offensive year, the big selling point will be Purdue's defense, which held opponents to 206 points last year.

All 11 starting defenders return. And when you realize part of this includes defensive ends Ray Edwards and Rob Ninkovich, who could be this year's answer to Wisconsin's twin terrors of 2004, Erasmus James and Anttaj Hawthorne, who were keys to the 9-3 Badgers' powerful defense last fall, it's not hard to envision a truly dominant Purdue defense.

And when you hear Edwards, you know the Boilers are thinking big. "I want to go to Pasadena," the 6-feet, 6-inch, 270-pounder from Cincinnati told Kubat. "I don't know about anybody else, but I'm trying to help my team get to Pasadena (where the Bowl Championship Series' national title game will be held).

"Everybody talks about the 2001 Rose Bowl, but we lost that game. And that was five years ago. So I want to go back, and I want to be talked about for a long time, too."

Given the presence of Iowa, Penn State, Ohio State and Michigan, all of whom possess major league defenses, the Boilers' D may just be the most memorable part of the 2005 Purdue season.

Tiller will look to find a viable receiving stable to complement proven standouts Kyle Ingraham (51 receptions, 624 yards, 7 touchdowns in 2004) and Dorien Bryant (38 for 584 yards, 3 scores). the key concern will be finding a replacement for wideout Stubblefield, whose 1,095-yard, 16-touchdown output opened eyes across the country

Kirsch will be shadowed by a very talented freshman, redshirt freshman Curtis Painter, a fact expert motivator Tiller isn't bashful about periodically emphasizing, wielding that classic needle in the process.

"Part of it is we want to remind (Kirsch) that he needs to keep his foot down on the accelerator all the time," Tiller told Kubat.

"But the other part of it is Painter is a pretty daggone good-looking prospect."

The Boilers again will have a productive running game, led by senior Jerod Void (625 yards, 3 TDs) and another senior, Brandon Jones (477 yards, 2 TDs).

There may not be any Stubblefields, any Vinnie Sutherlands, Drew Breeses or Ortons to stretch opposing defenses -- at least not yet. Apparently.

But you learn to never attach the label "rebuilding" to any Joe Tiller team. And you figure when the Boilers take the field against Arizona in Tucson Sept. 10, they will be do so with Edwards' declaration as a goal.

Given the bizarre stretch of tough breaks in 2004, a few points here and there, you don't need Lewis Carroll's imagination to allow yourself to envision an electrifying culmination to Joe Tiller's Purdue career come January.