Around a year ago today, Ryan Walters had just been named Purdue's head football coach and was scrambling to gather information on the current roster, manage the transfer portal and recruit additional players, all while building his staff in West Lafayette.

Fast forward to today, Walters and the Boilermakers are in a much better place when early National Signing Day rolled around.

"It is night and day comparatively from where we are right now to a little over a year ago," Walters said at his signing day press conference on Wednesday.

That additional time to identify needs within the roster and have a full year to recruit will pay dividends for the Boilermakers moving forward into the spring semester, which will also look different than it did

"I think chemistry will be better, competition will be better and spring ball, we will probably be able to have a spring game because we'll have the the numbers to do so," Walters said. "Definitely excited for the spring semester and getting those guys here, inundated within a culture."

Purdue inked its 2024 recruiting class on Wednesday, where 25 new players signed their National Letters of Intent to join the program heading into next season. The class ranked 33rd in the country and 7th in the Big Ten this cycle, with the national ranking being the best by a Purdue head coach in their first full class in the Rivals era.

Walters is confident in the group that he and the rest of the coaching staff built during their first full year on the recruiting trail, sharing that they have full belief in all 25 signees contributing to their quest for championships in West Lafayette.

"We wouldn't accept or take anybody in, put them in this program if we didn't feel really good about them. You don't just hand out scholarships for favors, you know what I mean? So everybody that we signed, we feel like are going to help us win a championship," Walters said of the group.

The Boilermakers also came out of signing day without breaking a sweat as they did not have any surprises to encounter, which made life easier for Walters and the staff on Wednesday.

"There was no surprises today, so that's awesome. When you go to signing day, and you're not like 'Oh snap, what's going on?' That's usually a good day. So nothing really wild or out of the ordinary," Walters said.

The incoming class makes up the majority of the new faces currently set to join the Boilermakers in 2024, which will give Purdue a fresh looking roster heading into the fall, thanks large in part to the ever-evolving transfer portal wave around college football.

The Boilermakers have also seen 21 scholarship players depart to the transfer portal, but Walters did not seem too worried about the losses from this year's group.

"You know, right now, there's like one guy that I'm like --- man, I wish we'd still had them. But everyone else, you know, I understood it and and some of it was encouraged. So I feel good from that standpoint, just on a retention," Walters said.

Purdue has eight commitments out of the transfer portal in the cycle, including offensive linemen Joey Tanona, DJ Wingfield and Corey Stewart, defensive line/outside linebackers Shitta Sillah, Jamarius Dinkins and C.J. Madden, wide receiver Kam Brown and running back Reggie Love III.

Walters gave credit to the Boilermaker Alliance for not only some of the transfer portal additions entering the program, but for helping Purdue retain a number of key contributors from 2023 to keep them in West Lafayette moving forward.

"Retention is at the forefront of what we're trying to do like that is that is of the utmost importance," Walters said. "Retention is not possible and the guys that we have committed from a transfer portal is not possible without the [Boilermaker] Alliance. And I think people need to understand that. Like these conversations wouldn't even be had, you know, the trips, to the official visits wouldn't be possible without the alliance."

Walters shared that there are still some transfer portal targets that the Boilermakers are pursuing and hope to land in the near future, but the roster is nearly set going into the spring semester as the pursuit of high school prospects is all but complete.

"I think from a high school standpoint, we're probably about done. Like I said, we got you know, 25 guys that are committed and signed. There are a couple more portal guys out there that we're hoping to close here pretty quickly," Walters said.

The recruiting world never stops in college football, which will be true of Purdue as it looks like continue improving the roster, but the majority of the work is done for next year's group of Boilermakers at the moment.