Purdue Says Caleb TerBush Will Start Vs. Wisconsin

Our good friends at Hammer and Rails have passed along a bit of pretty significant news, especially for this early in the week.

Heck, it's still the weekend and Purdue head coach Danny Hope has already announced his starting quarterback for this weekend's Wisconsin game. Hey, a head coach being forthright with his depth chart! Unprovoked, too! I wonder how that feels.

Anyway, Hope says Caleb TerBush is the Boilermakers' No. 1 quarterback and Robert Marve will remain his backup. Purdue got trounced by Michigan this weekend, so neither guy really looked "good" per se. But Terbush was generally ineffective (16-for-25, 105 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT) while Marve at least went 5-for-8. He did add a pick as well, though.

This is all to the dismay of H&R, which believes Hope is just trolling everyone with his choice of quarterback.

Yesterday was yet another of many frustrating days for Purdue football. One of the very few bright spots was seeing Robert Marve jog in on a bad knee and immediately lead Purdue down the field into scoring position. Under Caleb TerBush Purdue had gone punt, punt, interception or touchdown, fumbled kickoff, field goal, punt, touchdown on a 36 yard drive, punt, punt. That's five punts and a mistake that handed the opposition seven points while Purdue barely gained 100 yards.

H&R proceeds to break down TerBush vs. Marve with a mix of Hope quotes and stats in the link above, so I recommend checking it out. Basically, here's the gist:

Marve: 3 games, 46 of 62, 71.9% completion rate, 457 yards, four TD, two INT, Rating: 146.2

TerBush: 4 games, 67 of 105, 63.8% completion rate, 636 yards, Eight TD, five INT, Rating: 130.3

How on earth is that more efficient? Are TerBush's 46 yards rushing and a TD against only nine yards for Marve really that much of a difference? You have a Quarterback efficiency rating that takes a number of factors into account (including the moon phases and tides for all I know) and even it says that Marve is statistically the more efficient quarterback. That means saying TerBush is more efficient is a blatant falsehood!