Purdue Football Coaching Changes: What The Hell is Burke Doing?

It has been a week and a half since the departure of Greg Hudson and John Shoop was announced. Coaches are flying all over the country to take new jobs, but at Purdue, you wouldn't know that we currently have three staff openings. Since announcing that Hudson, Shoop, and defensive line coach Rubin Carter were canned there has been absolutely nothing coming from the Purdue athletic department. No rumors, no smoke, no sign they are even active on the market right now. The last we heard was this during Burke's postseason presser a week ago:

Hazell is on the road recruiting the next two weeks, but will also start vetting candidates for the assistant coaching openings. Hiring two coordinators won't be easy, given Hazell's situation and if he can find the right style and philosophy to match the strengths of the current roster.

Burke will be involved from a process standpoint, asking questions and making sure Hazell is being thorough in his search. But Burke has his own thoughts.

"We've got to have an offensive philosophy that you can articulate, that is one that can replicate with the talent that you have. That's really important," Burke said. "It's one thing to have an offensive scheme but if the kids aren't capable of running it, you really don't have an offensive scheme that's going to lead you to be successful.

"On defense, I would just like to have the linebackers healthy. I thought with the two corners we were able to play press coverage and we still had trouble bringing pressure from different spots. You want the same thing — you want to understand the philosophy and why you think it will be successful in the Big Ten."

Well, we have seen a little pay off in recruiting with a pair of linemen signing on, but other than that we don't even know if anyone has been interviewed. As much as we have criticize Hazell it is difficult to juggle a critical recruiting time of year with hiring two coordinators to likely save your job, but on the other hand, he has been paid over $6 million to generate three wins over FBS competition. I don't feel too sorry that he needs to do his job better.

So yeah, we have no idea what is going on. We made our own list of who Purdue can go after, but that is all wild speculation at this point. We don't even know what they have in mind for an offensive philosophy other than the Pro Set "fling shit at the wall and see what sticks" ideas from Shoop did not work. There are talented backs, receivers, and quarterbacks there so more of a spread would be nice, but who knows.

The right guy can make it work. There is an easier beginning to next season with even a built-in exhibition game to work some kinks out, but that means little if a promising coordinator is not brought in. We have no idea who they are looking for and even the carrot of "you can be interim head coach if we fire Hazell midseason" doesn't work well because:

1. Burke is on record as not wanting to make a move midseason.

2. We would only make a move if said coordinator comes in and is a disaster anyway, leading to another slow start, so why would we keep them around anyway?

I think one thing we can speculate on (and this is, once again, speculation) is that there will not be a promotion within. If Terry Malone or Marcus Freeman were being moved up in-house it would have happened by now.