Santa Lovie gives Purdue a big L for an early Christmas gift. Purdue slips to 2-6.

Photo Credit: Clinton Cole

It was a rotten day in God’s country. 45-50 degrees, gray and rainy for much of the afternoon…but the weather was not as horrid as Purdue’s frightening pre-Halloween contest.

In each of Jeff Brohm’s seasons, we’ve come to expect an ugly loss to a bad team…this season, we’ve now been treated to two bad losses in the 2019 season. But in this one, unlike its predecessors (Rugger ‘17, EMU ‘18, Nevada ‘19), Purdue was absolutely controlled, and lost the game on all sides of the ball. Sure, The Chief only passed the ball for 26 yards…but they did not really need to do more, nor did it matter that they played early 1900s-style football. The game was never in doubt.

It was gross on both sides, but at least it was close early in the game. Purdue was down by just three points, when Jack Plummer made (possibly) the worst throw of his young Purdue career. As he stared down a Purdue receiver on the left side, Illinois’ Tony Adams waited patiently, then broke on the poorly thrown ball. He easily took it to the house for the pick six. We all knew points would be tough to manufacture with the lousy conditions, so a 10-0 hole felt a lot bigger than it actually was.

Following the big mistake, Plummer was pulled for two series and Aidan O’Connell came in. He didn’t play poorly, but Purdue receivers did him no favors, and the offense kept misfiring. I counted three drops during O’Connell’s first stint at QB in this game. (Purdue’s QB tandem completed less than 50% of their passes for a total of 136yds.)

Purdue not only couldn’t pass the ball well, but ran it poorly too. The RB corps averaged about 3.1 yards/carry…but many of those yards seemed to come at inconsequential times. Some good news (especially with Worship unavailable again), Horvath was back in the backfield and he was more productive than Doerue or Fuller as he had the longest run of the day (19 yards) and finished with nine carries for a team high 54 yards.

Purdue’s gameplan didn’t look like it was well thought out- many of the plays seemed to go in the direction of Wright and Anthrop first and Bell was merely an afterthought…and early in the game, Purdue tried and tried again to run the ball to the outside and Illinois was there to slam the door shut.

Unlike in the Maryland game just a few weeks ago, Plummer and O’Connell didn’t have time to throw, and the running backs really never had lanes to run in.

Defensively, Karlaftis was memorable with two TFLs and six total tackles and Holt led the team with 12 total tackles and 1.5 for a loss. Purdue DBs weren’t really a factor.

Comparison of the game:

As the game was slipping away for Purdue, Purdue’s pooch punter/backup QB Carollo attempted to pin Illinois. Instead of spinning a high, short punt, he nearly missed the ball and foul-tipped a punt 15 yards. Conversely, Illinois had a punt blocked at the end of their next possession…that went 25 yards.

Purdue could truly do nothing right/well today. This had the feel of a Hazell game during the bad ol’ days…nobody in the stands in the second half, and little-to-no fight from the Good Guys, especially on offense, for much of the day.

We talked about this a bit on Twitter, and I’ll reiterate. We love Jeff Brohm, you probably know that if you visit the site. But today, his team was poorer prepared, had a worse gameplan and had no ability to counterpunch/adjust its way out of the adversity it faced early on. Our Boilermakers are already beaten, bruised and young…but versus Maryland and even Iowa, they looked like they were starting to gain some momentum as they were growing into their new roles. All of that momentum was wiped clean by the deluge.

I believe Brohm-coached squads are now 1-4 in the rain…and most of those games felt kinda like this. Purdue simply does not play well in the poor conditions, while their opponents find ways to gut it out.

Purdue’s hopes of a bowl are all but squelched as even the most-optimistic Boiler backer thought today was one of the remaining contests that needed to be in the left column. But as I said in the QuickCast, what does six wins and an invitation to Detroit really earn you at this point? Purdue needs to prepare for the future…now.

I think that starts by giving Plummer the majority of the snaps with the ones (instead of splitting them like last week). Next, get every large, healthy body a chance to play OL…AND, if they haven’t played yet, get guys on the field in the coming games since they’ll still be able to redshirt even if they play in all of the remaining games.

Not all is lost, and I still believe there are tons of positives that can be taken from having so many green players on the field…but saying today was anything more than a setback is foolish.

Next up, Nebraska visits God’s Country…pray for a dry day next Saturday.