Losing this many players to injuries has been unmooring. You have on one hand a version of this team that is its ideal; electric, creative offense paired with a dynamic, attacking defense. And on the other hand you have what you suspect this team to actually be. A ragged collection of players - many of whom weren’t expected to play at all this season - playing with what feels like a new unit every week. The former team should coast to seven wins, maybe hit eight or nine in a stretch. The latter would more closely resemble a Hazell team.

So the lead up to the Northwestern game was a jumble. Northwestern is awful this year. Weirdo coach Pat Fitzgerald has tried damn near everything to get this team in gear, and nothing was working. They couldn’t score, they couldn’t stop anyone, and they were just so consistently bad.

Perhaps this was the best team for Purdue to play: beat up on an inferior opponent a little, gain some confidence before closing the season as considerable underdogs against Wisconsin and Indiana.

But Northwestern conceded nothing; scored twice in the first quarter, and projected in the light cast by Purdue, looked like a solid middle-of-the-road B1G team. Which, of course, they are not. They are terrible, an easy win for any other team in the conference.

Credit Purdue for coming back. Credit Purdue for winning, for making the plays that it absolutely had to make. But also observe a running game with no teeth. A rushing defense that got pushed around by a bad Northwestern team. A fourth string walk-on QB who at times played like it. And a defense that was bullied and taken advantage of all game. A win enabled only by a fluke missed field goal from close range.

I’m happy they got the win, I’m happy that they at least notched one last win. But the interceptions, the getting gouged then their opponents run the ball, the allowing of conversions on 3rd down…this is what this team. This is how things will be.

Never wanting to wish away time, I still find myself looking fondly towards the end of the season. It’s just been a mess with injuries and disruptions, better just throw this whole season in the garbage and start over in 2020.

***

Struggle as I might to identify them, I can say that there were some positives today. Fourth string walk-on QBs can do a lot worse than what AOC did. And although we might have to accept turnovers as a fact of life for this team now, we can at least take comfort in the fact that he can get the ball out to where it needs to go. He was helped by David Bell, who just did everything today. Purdue is a special program to have both him and Rondale Moore on the same team.

That was not a fun game to watch, and I can say with some certainty that the next two games will be more of the same. But maybe Purdue is set up to reap the rewards of this pain next year and in the years to follow. Reps are good, succeeding under adversity is good, more time to evaluate players, that’s also good. Purdue has felt on the cusp of something more meaningful lately, and although this season has been a bit of a bust, there are ways in which the future of this program is bolstered by the suffering of its present.