Purdue football's season-defining moment quickly falls in Ryan Walters' lap (2024)

.

WEST LAFAYETTE — Throughout his first year with Purdue football, Ryan Walters said he prepared for the moment by compiling a coaching plan throughout his years as a player and assistant.

What does that guidebook tell him about how to lead the Boilermakers out of the worst loss — at least in magnitude — in program history? Walters’ experiences told him a staggered group will pay close attention to his own response. It cannot be one of insecurity.

“When you start to deviate from your plan, or deviate from your beliefs as a program, then as a leader, you start to falter,” Walters said. “And that gets felt, and it permeates throughout the locker room and is not good.

Insider: Notre Dame owned Purdue in 1 area where Boilers could have prevented rout

More: Purdue depth chart vs. Oregon State includes changes in defensive backfield

“The guys that I've seen be successful, when they have performances like this — or maybe a string of adverse moments — if they don't falter, and they stay steady, and they stay even-keeled, and they stay convicted in what they believe in, then so did the people that follow them.”

A potentially season-defining moment fell in Walters’ lap sooner than expected. After being picked to finish last in all of the Big Ten’s major preseason polls, the Boilermakers relished the opportunity to prove everyone wrong.

Getting run out of one’s own stadium in Game 2 made the preseason pessimism seem warranted. Now Walters must accomplish what Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman did after a season-altering upset loss to Northern Illinois. The team Walters takes to Oregon State must play a confident, disciplined brand of football Saturday.

That process began Sunday with a longer-than-usual team meeting and film session. Throughout the room, players and coaches confronted ”tough” moments of personal accountability. Schematic and fundamental adjustments must follow. Either through personal motivation or coaching, players on both sides of the ball must summon a more physical approach.

None of the points Purdue allowed last week carry forward to future weeks. That beatdown remains frozen in time and printed in record books — possibly for generations to come. How the Boilermakers respond to this shot to their pride, though, can absolutely follow this team forward.

“It’s hugely important,” Walters said. “Obviously we still have 10 games left, so you don't want to put a ton of stock in one or two games. But in order to accomplish what we have set out to accomplish this season, the urgency is right now.”

Pivotal stretch of season

These next two games — Saturday's trip to Oregon State and a home Big Ten opener against Nebraska one week later — loomed as a potentially pivotal fulcrum early in the season.

How would this team handle a trip out west to face a solid power conference opponent? How would it then handle a Cornhuskers team on the rise after so recently holding the upper hand in that rivalry of the now-defunct West division? Coming out of this first third of the schedule 1-3 severely complicates the chances of challenging for a bowl. Improving on last season’s 4-8 record also comes into question.

This particular road trip comes with logistical complications, thanks to the three-hour time difference. Instead of departing on Friday, Purdue will leave after Thursday’s morning practice. It allows a little extra time for body clock acclimation prior to the 5:30 p.m. local kickoff time.

Then comes an immediate postgame flight home and an anticipated 6:30 a.m. arrival in West Lafayette. That effectively leaves the Boilermakers with a shorter — or at best, disjointed — period of rest and recovery in preparation for Nebraska.

For all of those reasons, the last thing Purdue could accommodate right now is a fractured locker room. Walters said he paid attention to what happened on the sideline late in the Notre Dame loss. He hung around the locker room longer than usual, listening to how players responded to that disheartening loss.

“If we would have had that type of performance a year ago, it would have taken a lot to sort of galvanize the troops and regroup,” Walters said. "... This team is together. This team is tight-knit. They believe in each other and they're ready to move forward.”

The Notre Dame example

Along with schematic and performance improvements, the coaching staff also must either protect or restore confidence where necessary. Freeman obviously did that with the way Notre Dame asserted itself in all three phases for four quarters.

Offensive coordinator Graham Harrell recounted to the team how his Texas Tech squad took a 10-0 record to Oklahoma in 2008, only to get crushed 65-21. He wanted them to understand “really good teams get got sometimes.”

That theme emerged quickly after the Notre Dame loss, hiding beneath the initial disappointment and humiliation. The result shocked the Boilermakers because it so extremely contrasted with what they saw in practices and workouts for nine months. Arguing they did not look outmatched against the Irish would be futile. They can only make a weekly argument the 66-7 version of Purdue disappeared as quickly as it emerged.

“We have to do a great job of conveying that message as a staff, and I think we have to do a great job of living that out as a staff,” Harrell said.

Walters hoped to join the small list of Purdue coaches who beat Notre Dame with their first try. Having missed that target by a mile, he must now join the list of those who did not let an early setback define a season.

Joe Tiller’s career began with a loss at Toledo — a strong MAC team that season, but a MAC team nonetheless. One week later, Purdue upset No. 12 Notre Dame and finished the season in the top 15.

An 0-3 start under Jeff Brohm in 2018 included a 20-19 clunker of a home loss to a mediocre Eastern Michigan team. The season turned with a 30-13 victory over a ranked Boston College squad. A month later, the Boilermakers crushed No. 2 Ohio State in the Tyler Trent Game.

That urgency Walters mentioned applies regardless of the remaining names on the schedule. Hard to ignore, though, where Purdue’s future opponents find themselves as the week begins.

Indiana went to the Rose Bowl and dominated UCLA. The Hoosiers, Illinois, Michigan State and Nebraska — all teams fighting to climb out of the lower half of the Big Ten along with Purdue — opened the season 3-0.

On the other end, Wisconsin looks vulnerable with quarterback issues and the 16^th-best defense in the Big Ten in yards per play allowed. But if Purdue is still dragging around that Notre Dame shame when it travels to Camp Randall in three weeks, that series losing streak will undoubtedly reach 18.

“I embrace struggle, I embrace adversity, and this team will as well,” Walters said. "I'm excited to see how we respond, and fully expect us to respond the right way.”

Walters said Monday he is “as confident as I’ve ever been” after gauging his team’s mentality in the previous 48 hours. He also knows that confidence filters down from the top.

Follow IndyStar Purdue Insider Nathan Baird on X at @nwbaird.