Taking a look at the size and experience of the Oregon State Lines and LBs and seeing how they match up against Purdue's equivalents. (Note: Purdue has not released a 2-deep for this week’s game so I’m making some educated guesses about personnel.) (Note#2 – A number of teams on this season’s schedule have already factored in the player’s extra year of eligibility. Where possible, I’ve not done so in order to try and get a truer picture of each team’s experience. Thus, my numbers may not always jibe with other sites however a Senior, 5th year and 6th year player all count the same) (Note #3 – As not every team has released a 2-deep, I have not done the normal comparisons to other B10 teams this week. Following everyone’s first game, that information should be available and comparisons will return at that time)
- Starting small. This week Purdue’s defense will face a Oregon State O-line which will the smallest line from a G5 team since Purdue faced MSU in 2018 coming in at 298.6 lbs. They return all 5 starter from last season, however as a group, they are still on the young size with an average of 2.8 years of experience. Collectively, they have a very good 82 career starts with the center accounting for 33 of those (some from his time in Arizona). Last season Iowa was the smallest, but OSU's is actually smaller.
- This week’s Purdue’s projected D-Line (Kalaftkis, Johnson, Dean, Mitchell) averages about 281.3 lbs, down 5.0lbs from last year’s 288.3 lbs due to missing Neal’s mass. They will be outweighed by the Oregon State line by about 17.3 lbs per man on average. Purdue’s average experience is 3.25 years, up a a half year to last year’s line. As a unit they have 35 collective starts.
- Purdue’s projected LBs (Graham, Alexander, Brothers) come in at 226.7 lbs, up slightly from last year and are at 3.00 years of experience, the same as last season even with the loss of Barnes. They have a collective 25 starts between them.
- Purdue’s projected O-line (Long, Holstege, Hartwig, Witt, Miller) will average 306.0 lbs per man, up by 5 lbs from last year’s 301.0 lbs. They average 3.00 years of experience, up nearly a half-year from last season’s 2.6 years. Collectively, they have a decent number of starts, in 69. Starting out last season, this group had a mere 36 starts 51 starts so Purdue should be in much better shape this season.
- Oregon State features a 3 man front so we’ve added in their largest OLB for comparison sake. At 293.0 lbs, they will be one of the larger groups Purdue will face this season and have an anchor in the middle who’s listed at 347lbs. However, they are relatively young with a 2.50 year average. They have three new starters this year. They’ll be outweighed by Purdue’s O-line by 13.0 lbs per man. As mentioned, they’re largely all new starters so they’ll have just 11 starts between them (one of the DE's, Sandberg, has 10 of those).
- The three remaining Oregon State LBs are a larger group at 237.33 lbs. They also have decent experience with 3.0 years at the position and the collective starts are at 52. It’s not quite like the 89 that Northwestern’s LBs had last season, but it’s very good. This group is very similar in terms of size and experience to Iowa’s group that Purdue opened up with last year.
Vegas predicts Purdue by 7.0 points (Opened up as Purdue by 5.5 points)
MasseyRatings predicts a 34-28 Purdue win
Sagarin predicts a 0.07 point Oregon State win (Don’t think I’ve ever seen this slim of a margin)
CollegeFootballPoll predicts a 3.29 Purdue win.
Compughter Ratings doesn’t have Purdue on their free site (and I'm too cheap to pay), but does have Oregon State and Nebraska. The site ranks Purdue at #72 while Nebraska is farther behind at #81. The outcome of that simulation is 36-29 Nebraska. Just sayin’.
For those of you who care about recruiting ratings, here are the starter’s Rivals ratings:
Purdue...........................Oregon State
QB Plummer 3*..............Noyer 3* (Colorado)
RB Horvath NR..............Baylor 2*
WR Wright 4*..................Flemings 3*
WR Bell 4*.........…...……..Bradford 3*
WR Sheffield 3*.............. Lindsey 4* (Nebraska)
TE Durham 3*.................Musgrave 3*
LT Long 2*...................….J Gray 3*
LG Witt 2*...................... Levengood 3*
C Hartwig 4*...................Eldrige 2* (Arizona)
RG Holstege 2*............. Keobounnam 2* (DT)
RT Miller 3*..................... Kipper 2* (Hawaii)
DE Mitchell 3*..................Anderson NR
DT Johnson 3*……..…..….Sio 2*
DT Dean 3*…...................Sandberg 3*
DE/LB Karlaftis 4*..........Gumbs 4* (Oklahoma)
LB Alexander 3*....…...... Roberts 4* (Nebraska)
LB Brothers 3* ……………Speights 3*
LB Graham 3*...…………..Hughes-Murray 3*
CB Trice 3*.........……........Austin 3*
CB Mackey 3*..................Wright 2*
FS Allen 3*......……….........Oladapo NR
SS Grant 4*.................…. Julian 3*