It is good to be back! College football is around the corner and the Purdue Boilermakers are a team that will surprise people! Prior to the Jeff Brohm era, Purdue’s last six-win season was in the 2012 season. While Brohm was a good coach at Purdue, his overall record while in West Lafayette was only 36-34 (.514 win percentage). Now that Brohm is at Louisville, the Ryan Walters era has begun.
The Walters Era
For those who may not know Walters, he spent the beginning (’09-’14) of his coaching career bouncing around from school to school as an assistant coach. Going into the 2015 season, he was named as the safeties coach at Missouri and the co-defensive coordinator in 2016. He was promoted to the defensive coordinator at Missouri in 2018 and served that role till he was hired as the DC at Illinois in 20221. In 2022, he led the Illini’s defense to a top 3 rating and was name a Finalist for the Broyles Best Coordinator Award.
This is where the fun begins.
Brohm was hired as the new head coach for Louisville just before the Boilermakers were to play in their bowl game in January of 2023. The Boilermakers took their time to make their hiring decision. As a result, Walters barely had time to bring in recruits and transfers before his first season. He still managed to bring in quality recruits and transfers like AP Preseason All-American Dillon Thieneman and Hudson Card.
The Boilermakers Future
Walters led Purdue to a 4-8 season, that many college football fans found disappointing – while others found inspiring.
Purdue had one of the worst secondaries in the all of college football, but had a solid front seven on defense. They even had two of the top-3 sack leaders in the Big Ten! Seeing that the secondary was a problem, Walters made that a focus of the off-season.
Walters brought in the top CB transfer in Nyland Green from Georgia, along with fellow CB Kendrich Breedlove from Colorado. He recruited the top CB in the 2025 class (Terrion Grant) who reclassified to 2024. Walters also brought in two four-star recruits at safety in Koy Beasley and Luke Williams. On top of all of that, he also brought in six other recruits and transfers to fill out the Secondary.
The Boilermakers lost most of their wide receivers in the off-season. They tried to fix this by recruiting and adding players through the transfer portal. This included receivers like Cam Brown, speedster CJ Smith, and De’Nylon Morrissette. They are also bringing back up-and-coming tight end Max Klare, who is the player returning with the most receiving yards from last year.
The Schedule
This year, the Boilermakers have one of the most difficult schedules in the Big Ten. Before the season starts, Purdue has four ranked teams on their schedule. All four are currently ranked as top-10 teams in the nation. They also have to play multiple other teams who had winning records last year like 8-5 Oregon State and 7-6 Wisconsin. Top that off with three of their last four games being away games, and Purdue gets a tough schedule.
The Spoilermakers
The “Spoilermakers” will rear their heads this season. The nickname was given to Purdue football due to them leading all of CFB in wins as an unranked team playing against top-5 ranked opponents. Since the beginning of the Brohm era, Purdue has won three such games with the best being a 49-20 stomping of then-No. 2 ranked, undefeated Ohio State on a Friday night in Rose-Ade. This year, the Boilers will host No. 7 Notre Dame, No. 3 Oregon, and No. 8 Penn State. All three are games that could be upsets.
Notre Dame
We haven’t seen what this Notre Dame team will look like with their new quarterback and running back room. We also know that Purdue has the second-best record against Notre Dame of all the Power Conference teams. This game could be one where Card picks apart the Fighting Irish’s defense and Purdue’s defense stalls the Irish’s offense. This feels like the least likely upset of the three.
Oregon
Oregon will be traveling a lot this year; bouncing back and forth from the west coast and the midwest dragging on their players and staff. This game in particular could be a trap game. In Week 6, Oregon hosts Ohio State on Saturday, October 12. After such a grueling matchup, the Ducks get a few days to recover before flying across the country to West Lafayette to play Purdue on a Friday night. This is an upset waiting to happen.
Penn State
The game against Penn State feels the most likely to be an upset. Penn State’s new offensives game plan has yet to be seen, but their head coach is the kind of person who wants to keep it simple and not get too cute with the offense.
If the Boilermakers’ secondary can kick it into shape by this mid November game, that could be bad news for Penn State.
Coach Walters has shown his willingness to play aggressive, and Card will be in his second year of this scheme with more willingness to throw the ball. The biggest threat to Purdue in this game are the Penn State running backs and the Boilermakers’ Secondary. Two things that Purdue should be able to outplay.
Hunter Greene
Hunter started writing for The League Winners in the summer of 2021. Hunter has been playing fantasy football for about a decade, starting in middle school. Now he’s a professional landscaper and avid Colts and Purdue fan.