How 2017 can show Jeff Brohm was a great hire for Purdue

This preview originally published June 20 and has since been updated.

The most intriguing hires are the ones that both portend quality and make a nod toward a happy history. The most frustrating hires are the ones that do neither.

Purdue’s hire of Darrell Hazell in 2013 fell into the latter category for me. I gave it a B+ when it was first made, but when the time came to write the Purdue preview that summer, I was increasingly lukewarm. I called it taking the mannequin home — finding the most Big Ten person available, with the deepest Big Ten ties, and asking that guy to win in the Big Ten. Hazell was a longtime Jim Tressel assistant who played safe, focused on defense and ball control, and had had one good year as a head coach.

The hire was sensible, but it in no way acknowledged Purdue’s history. Over the last 60 years, the school has made three good football hires:

These coaches went a combined 208-120-10 with 15 ranked finishes and 14 bowl bids in 31 years. (The number of bowls would have been higher if the Big Ten had been more than a one-bid league during Mollenkopf’s era.)

The other seven Purdue coaches in this span: 115-218-6 in 30 years, with three bowl bids and no ranked finishes.

Purdue has succeeded with an eye toward offense. Hazell was an offensive assistant at Ohio State, Rutgers, etc., but the hire lacked ambition, and it glommed onto someone else’s history. Defense and ball control works when you’ve got Ohio State recruits, not whatever Hazell was going to attract to Purdue.

Hazell went 9-33. His recruiting wasn’t good enough to succeed with any style, and the conservatism assured the Boilermakers were both bad and aesthetically unappealing.

Credit new athletic director Mike Bobinski with understanding that both aesthetics and history are important. Bobinski dismissed Hazell midway through a dismal 3-9 campaign — Purdue’s fourth straight season with three or fewer wins and its seventh bowl-free campaign in nine years — and replaced him with the Tiller template: a successful mid-major head coach with a dynamite offense.

Brohm barely has more experience than Hazell; he spent three years as Western Kentucky’s head man, just one more than Hazell spent at Kent State. And while he has aced recent tests, he has plenty of iffy stops on his résumé: his first Louisville offense (2008) fell from ninth to 76th in Off. S&P+, his two seasons as Illinois’ quarterbacks coach (2010-11) were hit-and-miss, and his lone season as UAB coordinator (2012) was a non-starter. Plus, just because his teams score points doesn’t mean he’s destined to win.

Still, it’s hard not to be excited. Bobinski went out and nabbed a guy who’s won 30 games in three years and whose teams scored more points in three years (1,834) than Purdue has scored in six (1,784).

Brohm came to WKU with Bobby Petrino in 2013 and took over when Petrino left for Louisville after one season. He took everything Petrino (and Willie Taggart before him) was building and weaponized it. The Hilltoppers were 61st in S&P+ in his first season and in the top 20 in each of the last two years. They were the highest-ranking Group of Five team both years.

When Brohm has pieces, he knows how to use them. But it might still take him a little while to put pieces together. He inherits a quarterback who threw 21 interceptions last year, a receiving corps that has to replace its top four, and a defense that fell from 58th to 73rd to 99th in Def. S&P+ over the last two years. At WKU, he didn’t have to show patience. But on paper, this was a home run, and Purdue fans have reasons to be excited for the first time in a long while.

2016 Purdue statistical profile.

My 2016 Purdue preview was titled, “Purdue will field a football team in 2016.” We break out the snarky titles only when we’re sure a season is going to be awful.

If you’re scouring for a sliver of hope for 2017, it might be worth noting that Purdue’s mostly young offense — sophomore quarterback, sophomore running back, freshmen and sophomores accounting for 24 of 60 starts on the offensive line — showed some of up-and-down promise throughout the season, both before and after Hazell’s firing.

The offense wasn’t good, but the high points — 6-plus yards per play in each non-conference game, 6.3 per play and 35 points against Iowa — were reasonably high. The defense, however, fell apart. The line, expected to be a relative strength, was destroyed by injury, and the Boilers had little else to offer.

Full advanced stats glossary.

If you’re scouring for optimism, you’ve also got this nugget:

Under the guidance of Brohm and quarterbacks coach/offensive co-coordinator Brian Brohm, White thrived. His USF past was in no way a WKU prologue.

And David Blough’s 2016 was better than White’s 2014 in most categories. Or at least, it wasn’t worse.

Blough threw more picks despite throwing shorter passes, but he was also facing better defenses than what White faced; Wisconsin ranked seventh in Def. S&P+, Penn State ranked 14th, Iowa ranked 15th, Minnesota ranked 23rd, Indiana ranked 31st, Northwestern ranked 32nd, and Nebraska ranked 33rd.

Blough was dealt a tough hand, but he still managed 3,352 passing yards and 25 touchdowns to go with his 21 picks, and now he’s under the guidance of QB whisperers. Plus, though the line has to replace three longtime starters, sophomore tackle Matt McCann has potential, and the addition of 6’8 Rhode Island transfer Dave Steinmetz (a three-year starting tackle for the Rams), NIU transfer Shane Evans, and 6’7 redshirt freshman Grant Hermanns offers options and upside.

That all sounds great! Now Blough just needs people to give the ball to. A minor issue, that. DeAngelo Yancey was the bright spot of Purdue’s 2016 offense, finishing with 49 catches for 951 yards. He’s gone. So are the next three on the list: Bilal Marshall, Cameron Posey, and Dominique Young. Running back Markell Jones showed efficiency potential but offered almost no big-play threat; in fact, Purdue had just 32 rushes of 10-plus yards in 2016, fewest in the country.

Jones had explosive moments as a freshman in 2015, so perhaps he shouldn’t be written off. But Jones aside, Purdue will be reliant on newcomers, injury returnees, and youngsters.

Tight ends Cole Herdman and Brycen Hopkins combined for 45 catches and 527 yards last year; they could be threats, considering the success WKU’s Tyler Higbee had under Brohm in 2015 (38 catches, 563 yards). But this is a mix-and-match set of newbies and guys who didn’t carve out success on a bad 2016 offense. There are almost no seniors, so whoever emerges will provide continuity in 2018, but this might take a while.

Brohm brought a large portion of his WKU staff with him to West Lafayette, and that includes new defensive co-coordinator Nick Holt.

Holt’s WKU defenses were angry, improving from 118th in Def. S&P+ in 2014 to 43rd in 2016. His 2016 defense dominated run games and forced opponents to the air. Granted, the Hilltoppers struggled to stop opponents through the air, but rendering them one-dimensional was a nice first step. Purdue had no such strength last year.

Brohm also brought Anthony Poindexter as defensive co-coordinator; the former All-American Virginia safety was Bob Diaco’s DC at UConn the last three years, carving out a bend-don’t-break niche that was the polar opposite of Holt’s. We’ll see what that means for Purdue’s philosophy.

Like WKU’s 2016 defense, however, the strength should reside up front. It should have last year, too, but the Boilermakers couldn’t keep anybody healthy. Of the eight primary linemen, only two played in all 12 games, and the other five missed a combined 29 games. Plus, Ja’Whaun Bentley, easily Purdue’s most disruptive linebacker, missed three games.

Bentley’s back, as are sophomore Markus Bailey and senior Danny Ezechukwu. WKU graduate transfer T.J. McCollum joins the rotation, too, and could form one of the better linebacking corps in the Big Ten. Bailey combined six tackles for loss with six passes defensed, and McCollum was a key piece of WKU’s strong run defense.

Up front, losing tackle Jake Replogle and end Evan Panfil (combined: 21.5 TFLs, 7.5 sacks) hurts, but four others got decent experience between injuries. Holt and Poindexter are weighing moving 280-pound end Gelen Robinson (8 TFLs) inside, which could provide quickness alongside players like tackles Eddy Wilson and Lorenzo Neal and end Austin Larkin.

Depth could be a concern among the front seven, but the first string could be disruptive. You could have the exact opposite in the secondary, where injuries created depth of experience — seven returnees made at least 6.5 tackles last year — but few known quantities.

Sophomore safety Navon Mosley was asked to take on a huge role early, as were sophomore corner Josh Hayes and juniors Tim Cason, Jacob Thieneman, and Antonio Blackmon. Seniors Da’Wan Hunte (corner) and C.J. Parker (safety) are back as well. There are options, especially considering the addition of mid-three-star recruits T.J. Jallow (a JUCO corner) and Dedrick Mackey (freshman corner), but there’s no guarantee anyone will step up. The pass rush better come through.

Purdue’s special teams unit was young as hell, with a freshman place-kicker and kickoffs guy (J.D. Dellinger), sophomore punter (Joe Schopper), and freshman kick returner (Brian Lankford-Johnson). So there’s an excuse for why the Boilers ranked 83rd in Special Teams S&P+.

Lankford-Johnson was semi-efficient, and Schopper was downright good, so there’s reason to believe this unit will improve. Dellinger made just 75 percent of his under-40 kicks, though, and barely ever reached the end zone on kickoffs. [Update: Purdue’s since added grad transfer Spencer Evans, a big-legged kicker from Baylor.]

Brohm doesn’t inherit a senior-heavy squad. That’s a plus. Granted, seniors could make up about half of the defense, but the odds are good that whoever emerges will return in 2018.

This might not be a full-fledged Year Zero situation, in which the smartest thing to do is strip the house to the studs and start over. Brohm might be able to get mileage out of Blough and some new skill guys, and maybe there’s enough in the defensive front seven to keep the Boilers in games.

Still, the schedule doesn’t include many likely wins, even for a slightly improved team. The Boilermakers will probably beat Ohio and could hope to split tossup games against Rutgers and Illinois and maybe steal an upset against a Missouri or Minnesota or Nebraska or Indiana. But 2017 will be mostly about planting seeds.

All power conference preview data to date.