Before this year started I felt that a bowl game was a reasonable expectation. Winning the Big Ten West always feels like a pipe dream, but after the last two seasons, just making a bowl game would be a sign of actual, tangible progress for a program that had stalled, then even backslid a little under Jeff Brohm the past two seasons.
That goal is now on the line in the final four games of the year.
It hasn’t always been pretty. Even today, Purdue had two bad field goal misses, dropped a near certain pick-six, gave up some big plays defensively, and had stalled drives.