| Purdue finally found a way to close a game, picking up a win in their most important game of the season. Talk about your swing games, with a loss, Purdue would have been struggling to maintain bowl eligibility. But with that win, you could argue they are now favorites in the Big Ten West, picking up a road win over, arguably, their biggest competition. Now while that's a nice start within the division, they already have a home loss against the third ranked team from the East in their first crossover game, and now they face the fourth best team, on the road. A loss here, and they will likely need to retain head to head supremacy over all of their division foes. Oddly, Maryland's best resume booster is a close road loss at Michigan. They beat a pair of cream puffs. After last night, the close win over SMU looks fairly troubling. And of Michigan State's three losses, Maryland was the only team they stayed close with. The narrative that Maryland was all offense seemed to hold last week, after Maryland and Michigan State exchanged touchdowns on the first three drives, and Maryland only forced one punt in the first half. That narrative flipped quickly in the second half. After scoring touchdowns on their first two drives, Maryland only reached the end zone once in their next eight drives. Against a Michigan State defense which hasn't stopped anyone with a pulse, that's concerning. However, the Maryland defense, which was questionable, allowed a serviceable, but not great Michigan State offense, to tally just 72 second half yards, with 62 of them on one drive. If this Maryland defense can just be decent, that's scary. Taulia Tagovailoa continues to develop as a passer. He not only found 10 different receivers last week, but 9 of them had multiple receptions. Even with Rakim Jarrett clearly not at 100%. I think the Purdue secondary is in for a rude awakening. Sean Clifford torched them late in that win. Same with Syracuse. They were solid last week, but with Mohamed Ibrahim out, the Gophers needed Tanner Morgan to do more than he was capable of. The Terps have a balanced attack, which Purdue has been 0-2 against thus far. |