Previously: Purdue Offense, Seth's video breakdown of the No-Name.

Yesterday we looked at the Purdue offense. Today we pivot to the side of the ball that head coach Ryan Walters specializes in. He doesn't have his guys yet, but this is still the principles of a Ryan Walters defense: 

The Film: Still rolling with Ohio State because they are the best offense that Purdue has faced this season and the game was relatively recent. 

Personnel: Click for big. 

Purdue is playing with a consistent five-man defensive front, three defensive tackles and then two EDGE-shaped players in their base defense. The three starting defensive tackles are Isaiah Nichols, Cole Brevard, and Malik Langham. Of these three players, the one I liked the most was the nose Brevard, but none reached star status. They were also just okay against an Ohio State offensive line that is not the world's most imposing on the ground. All three rotate out a decent amount, as you'd expect with DTs. The second group of tackles are Jeffrey M'Ba, Mo Omonode, and Joe Anderson, plus Sulaiman Kpaka. I thought the second-string DTs were noticeably worse than the starters, with M'Ba being one who was taken advantage of in particular. 

Their two EDGE guys are a pair of Dudes, Nic Scourton and Kydran Jenkins. Scourton, who you may remember as the humorously named Nic Caraway in last year's FFFF (he changed his last name this offseason), has taken a sizable step forward and is a legit disrupter with three sacks and 16 hurries. Jenkins, who is twenty pounds lighter at 260, is a dangerous passrusher in his own right and has thrived having Scourton opposite him on a blitzy defense, racking up seven sacks and 21 pressures of his own. Both players can drop into coverage but they don't do it very often, 23% of Jenkins' snaps and 18% of Scourton's snaps, per PFF's charting. They also don't leave the field much but if they do, Will Heidt and Khordae Sydnor are two players who can come on in relief. 

Purdue's five man front leaves them with either one or two ILBs depending on package. Against heavy, they have two and against a more spread offense, they leave just one out there. We're making the diagram heavy because, you know, they're playing Michigan. The two starters are Yanni Karlaftis (brother of George) and Clyde Washington, who is replacing injured starter OC Brothers. I do not think highly of either of these players and I am a longtime hater of Brothers. Brothers would've gotten the cyan if healthy, Washington does. Karlaftis narrowly avoids it. 

In the secondary, we're listing four men with the nickel on the bench in starter's font. The starting outside corners are Markevious Brown and Derrick Rogers Jr., both of whom get to play with quite a bit of cushion in this man-heavy system. Brown gets the larger cushion and was exploited often by OSU in the game I charted, getting the cyan. Rogers definitely showed me much more in the way of strong coverage. Nickel Cam Allen is a bit of a problem as well, as Purdue's coverage is definitely not the same caliber of the last defense Walters fielded, when he had Devon Witherspoon at his disposal. The two safeties are the spectacularly named Sanoussi Kane at SS and Dillon Thieneman at FS, who plays in the parking lot, as is customary for a Walters defense. There's not much rotation in the secondary, but Botros Alisandro is the one corner who rotated in worth mentioning. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: man coverage with iffy corners]

Base set: Here's the 5-2-4 against heavy: 

And here's 5-1-5 against spread: 

As you probably notice, the deep safety plays a million miles deep (off the screen). You may remember this if you read last year's Illinois FFFF. 

Man or zone coverage: This is Ryan Walters. He is running Man-1/Cov1 as the coverage on the vast majority of snaps, putting Purdue squarely in the man coverage arena. The only other coverage of note to know is I charted a total of four snaps against Ohio State where Purdue dropped eight into a zone. This is a man defense to its core.

Pressure: Last season when I charted Walters at Illinois, he rushed only three ~21% of the time and blitzed ~49% of the time. This season against Ohio State he rushed fewer than four players on just the four plays I mentioned in the coverage section, which comes out to 6.5% of snaps overall. The the blitzing remained high- even higher than last year in fact. Against Ohio State Purdue rushed more than four players on 70.9% of charted snaps(!!!!), an astronomically high number. As I wrote last season, it's worth remembering that the Purdue's "blitzes" are often just rushing all five guys at the line from their 5-1/5-2 defense, not necessarily sending an LB or corner, so that number is a bit more understandable given that. However, there were plenty of 6 and 7-man pressures too. Walters is super blitzy this year. 

Dangerman: I had a choice here between the two EDGE guys but Nic Scourton made the bigger impact in this game. Purdue's defense was thoroughly torched by Ohio State's offense, but the resistance they put up generally came from the pass rush and Scourton was at the forefront of this. He forced a turnover on a strip sack of McCord: 

Stand-up EDGE #5 to the top of the DL

That was against the RT, while he draws a hold against the LT on this next play, negating a sizable gain as OSU had an open receiver down the field: 

Stand-up EDGE #5 to the bottom of the DL

This next play is a bit of an encapsulation of the battle between the OSU offense and the Purdue defense, Scourton starting to get home on a nice rush (cool spin move) up the middle but McCord having just enough time to get the ball out to open receivers who have been able to beat the Boilers' man coverage: 

#5 going up against the RG

I'm not sure that Scourton or his compatriot Kydran Jenkins will be able to have a huge impact against Michigan because the caliber of Michigan's offense is plainly better than Purdue's defense, but he is a legitimately good player and one of the best passrushers Michigan will face this regular season. Scourton's 84.0 PFF pass rush grade is better than that of PSU's Chop Robinson and second only to Aaron Lewis in the B1G among edge defenders with >250 snaps this season. He's a Dude. 

 

Overview 

I hinted at this in the Dangerman section, but the matchup of the game I charted, Ohio State's offense against Purdue's defense, was defined by the fact that Ryan Walters' defense is not set up to beat Ryan Day for the same reason Don Brown's wasn't. Especially when your corners are not NFL caliber and Purdue's aren't. You can blitz all you want and have good pass rushers but if your corners have to play with immense cushion and even then struggle to hang with the opposing receivers, you're toast. Asking these corners to try and play man coverage against Marvin Harrison Jr. and the other talented players from Brian Hartline's stable of weapons is unfair. 

In other words, too many plays looked like this: 

Even when Walters dialed up his blitzes, they didn't have much success because typically at least one Buckeye receiver was open somewhere on the play and Kyle McCord, to his credit, did a good job of seeing who was open and delivering a catchable throw to nerf the pressure: 

That clip was a seven-man, zero blitz, which is extreme but again, this is a team that likes to try and create havoc. Most of their snaps with more than four players rushing are not interesting, simply having the five man front all rush the passer, but you do see some more creative blitzes from time to time. Here is a corner blitz that nearly got home from Derrick Rogers Jr., creating enough havoc to force an incompletion deep with a receiver running open: 

On the topic of Rogers, I thought he was Purdue's best corner. I liked this PBU by Rogers against Marvin Harrison Jr.: 

The other two corners, Markevious Brown and Nk Cam Allen, were much weaker. They were often lined up with 5-10 yards of cushion, leaving Purdue vulnerable to those sorts of dink-and-dunk throws that allowed OSU to neuter the pressure and move their offense up-and-down the field with impunity. It's Brown getting taken advantage of here, lined up a good 7-8 yards deep pre-snap: 

As outlined in the coverage section, Purdue is running the usual Cover1 with the ultra deep safety that we are familiar with Ryan Walters running from last year. This coverage scheme has its limitations given their personnel this season and I'm also not sure they have a change-up in the repertoire; their few zone snaps didn't look great, including this bomb: 

That's Allen and the deep safety Dillon Thieneman that Carnell Tate has split between down the field. My final note on the pass defense is highlighting the other EDGE opposite Scourton, Kydran Jenkins, also a very good football player. Here was his best moment in this game: 

This next clip is from last week's Nebraska game but it's too good not to show you. Jenkins is the EDGE much more likely to drop into space compared to Scourton, but even if he's dropping you've gotta be on the lookout if the QB is on the move: 

Kydran Jenkins is all over the field today.

His biggest play yet ⤵️

📺: FS1/@CFBONFOX pic.twitter.com/eitjZ1y7dC

— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) October 28, 2023

Listen to those pads popping! 

The run defense generally looked okay for Purdue against the Buckeyes, though it's not like OSU is the greatest test for this. NT Cole Brevard was a player I thought looked pretty good in this game, even if PFF isn't a fan. Here he gets a bit of push up the gut and the whole line stands tall: 

NT #91 pushing the center back

Purdue's best run defense snaps looked like that. Their first team defensive line generally did a solid job holding their ground and not getting pushed around. I think they should pose a mild test to Michigan's offensive line but they don't have any impact dudes in the middle of the line to be worried about. 

The run defense's worst snaps looked like the very next play, losing the edge...

I thought the DBs were not particularly great at tackling and the LBs are a bit of a weakspot. When they play in their 5-1 look, you're putting a lot on the plate of a singular linebacker and that linebacker was not reliably in the right position. When the second team defensive line was out there, OSU's OL was able to pancake the opposition: 

And finally, I should point out that if you want to toss in some opportunities for JJ McCarthy to pull the ball, I didn't see much indication that Purdue should be able to stop that, as the EDGE guys, while talented pass-rushers, were biting hard in run defense: 

They have some good EDGE guys, but there are just not enough dangerous players on this Purdue team right now defensively. We'll check back in on Walters in a few years and see how this is going.  

 

What does this mean for Michigan?

Like with the Purdue offense piece, not all that much. Michigan's offense is a lot better than Purdue's defense and should be able to move the ball pretty reliably. Whether that's merely dinking and dunking against soft coverage, having Roman Wilson take the top off deep, or clawing out yards on the ground, Michigan has plenty of ways they can hurt the Boilers. I like Walters' project in the long term, but he doesn't yet have the DBs to stop JJ McCarthy, and it's not like this defensive line is going to swallow up Michigan's OL either. If there is one thing that probably can be gleaned from this game, it's the valuable reps that Michigan's pass protection and offensive tackles specifically are going to get against good pass-rushing EDGE guys and a blitzy opposing defense that will try to make life hard on JJ.