Dillon Thieneman leaves Purdue for Oregon: Fix the losing and you fix the talent leak.

Posted by Admin December 14, 2024 Football

Spread the love

INDIANAPOLIS – No Purdue football player in recent memory personified the Boilermaker legacy like Dillon Thieneman.

Yet even family ties can only hold someone in place for so long. The safety committed out of the transfer portal to No. 1 playoff seed Oregon on Saturday.

A career which began with the elation of an interception in his 2023 debut against Fresno State, leading to one of the best freshman seasons in program history, will not end in a Boilermakers uniform. Fans are left only with those memories, the lingering promise of what could have been, and the knowledge the Ducks do not appear on Purdue’s 2025 schedule.

On the surface this may look like a repeat of last winter’s series of gut punches, with players such as Nic Scourton and Deion Burks leaving for better-financed destinations. Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Oregon can offer more than larger name, image and likeness income guarantees.

Thieneman will loom as a cautionary tale for the future of the Purdue program — and it has (almost) nothing to do with money.

Let’s start here: Boilermakers should mourn the departure of a respected player whose roots in the program transcended the term “homegrown.” His brothers, Jake and Brennan, preceded Thieneman through the program, rising from walk-ons to starters. Their example and influence helped turn their younger brother into the player he became.

Mourn his exit, but know this: Thieneman owed Purdue football nothing else. He arguably gave it more than he received in return.

After a freshman All-American season in 2023 — nearly leading the nation in interceptions — teams put out feelers as to whether the Westfield product would consider finding a new, more lucrative home. Out of a sense of loyalty to Purdue, trust in Ryan Walters’ vision for the future of the program and — not to a small extent — a rejection of those programs who overlooked him as a prospect, Thieneman stayed in West Lafayette.

While some of those same programs thrived without him, pushing toward bowl games or even into the College Football Playoff, the Boilermakers imploded in a 1-11 embarrassment.

Thieneman arguably regressed, too. After six interceptions as a freshman, he picked off none as a sophomore. He took too many poor angles and looked bad on more than a few missed tackles.

He also became almost a defensive scapegoat when he could not prevent jailbreak after jailbreak. Purdue’s schematic and talent deficiencies left him on an island, forced to clean up repeated failures to seal the edge or complete second-level tackles.

It should tell you everything you need to know about his performance that two visits he was known to have lined up — Oregon and Ohio State — came against Purdue opponents who would have scouted him extensively this season.

Yet when I spoke with Thieneman on Oct. 23, he was not bitter or jaded about the state of the program.

“We’ve shown stints where we can go out there and we can play with anyone, but we just got to put it all together,” Thieneman said. “People see that we can go out there, we can play. Everyone’s just gotta be on the same page.”

We do not yet know how far Purdue’s attempt to keep Thieneman for 2025 progressed. We know he met at least once with new coach Barry Odom, thanks to a photo of them exchanging a greeting in the weight room posted on the program’s X.com page.

I do know a certain sense of inevitability about the situation settled in shortly after Thieneman entered the transfer portal.

Oregon and Purdue work in different financial universes in everything from facilities to the budget available to acquire players. Assume for a moment, though, the money were anything close to equal. If you had only one more season of college football to play — and Thieneman might, if he leaves early for the NFL — where would you spend it, all other things being equal?

Odom said he hates the term “rebuild.” He can hate it all he wants, but unless a wave of talent pours into West Lafayette soon, that’s exactly what he’ll oversee in 2025. The schedule remains stout, featuring three Playoff teams and two others who played for the 2023 national championship.

The season may not be 1-11 bad, but it’s far too early to assume it will be much better.

Oregon, on the other hand, opens the first 12-team playoff with the best betting odds to win the national championship. The Ducks challenged to make the final four-team field, but fell short. They’ll likely be a mainstay going forward.

I know Thieneman and his family love Purdue. I also know they always looked on Thieneman’s career path independently from that affiliation. It was frustrating for everyone when his recruitment out of Westfield never really took off — in part because so many programs assumed he would be a Boilermaker, and that pursuing him would be a waste of time.

These past two weeks marked the first period in which both Thieneman and the rest of the college football world united in their belief he could play elsewhere. Inevitably, one of the best programs in the nation would commit to not making the same mistake it did when overlooking him as a high school prospect.

Would the same thing have happened if Purdue had merely gone 4-8 again, or even if it had surprised the Big Ten and made a bowl game? Perhaps. Setting his specific circumstances aside, losing at such a catastrophic level will always create instability. It will open the door for players to ask themselves if they want to continue being the best player on a bad team, or to cash in both financially and otherwise by joining a championship-level program.

Go ahead and substitute other names in here. Defensive end Will Heldt lined up visits to LSU and Clemson — two teams with national championship trophies from the past decade. Tight end Max Klare should have some impressive choices to weigh against returning to Purdue. They also may have only one more season in which to chase team success.

Odom and Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinski are united in the program-stabilizing impact of revenue sharing beginning next summer. That may open a new conduit of money, but it will not close the escape hatch players can use to eject from a discouraging on-field existence and land in the middle of a more exhilarating one.

Fix the losing and you fix the talent leak. Continue to drag along at the bottom of the Big Ten, and Purdue will continue to see players leave to chase more than money.