Walters Will Take Unemotional Approach To His Reunion With Purdue

The last time Ryan Walters encountered the Purdue football team, he was the Boilermakers second-year coach and he and his players went out and got demolished by Indiana 66-0 in Bloomington to end the season.

At stake was the Old Oaken Bucket in this state rivalry game. His job security probably was long gone well before that moment. The Boilermakers would finish with a 1-11 record after earlier losing to Notre Dame 66-7, Wisconsin 52-6, Ohio State 45-0 and Oregon 35-0.

Three days following the beatdown, Walters was unceremoniously fired, with athletic director Mike Bobinski publicly stating he no longer had confidence in the coach to right the ship. The suddenly unemployed Big Ten coach gathered up his family members and took everyone to Florida and Disney World.

Just shy of 12 months later, Walters, 39, is the University of Washington defensive coordinator now entrusted with coming up with a game plan to beat a still last-place Purdue team (2-8 overall, 0-7 conference), which will visit Husky Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Ryan Walters meets with the media in Seattle for the first time. | Dan Raley

Always very business-like, he's doing his best to downplay the emotional connection that surrounds this match-up.

"No, I've already had these reflection periods as far as my time there," Walters said on Tuesday. "For me personally, it's another Big Ten game that we need to play well, especially coming off of last week. The focus has been now to improve and give our guys a chance to win a ball game at home and right the wrongs of a week ago."

Coming to the Boilermakers from Illinois, where he was a defensive coordinator, Walters walked away from his first head-coaching experience with a 5-19 record over those two seasons in West Lafayette.

While the results were morbid at times, Walters still received just 23 months to turn things around as Purdue's 37th football coach, which was hardly enough time to build a new weight room or have business cards made up.

At the UW, accomplished coaches such as Jim Owens, Don James and Chris Petersen didn't enjoy significant success until their third seasons in Montake, with the first two leaders guiding their teams to the Rose Bowl and Petersen putting his Huskies in the College Football Playoff at that juncture.

Asked if he felt shorted in having enough time to rebuild, Walters said, "It's sort of in the past. You can't control it. You can't do anything about it now. I'm appreciative of my time there and the experience I had and the people i got to work with every day and the young men I got to coach. I'll be forever thankful for that opportunity."

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