A 20/20 Snapshot of 2020 (Pt. 1 of 2)
(photo credit: Artem Saranin)
Guestpost by Boilerson
It’s the dull, gray, cold part of winter…so a little dreaming of the late summer is a welcomed diversion. Grab a cup of coffee and read a bit of what might be this coming fall.
-BDowd
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It may seem odd—in the middle of basketball season and the sunless days of late January—to be thinking about football. We’ve been called far worse than “odd.” But we’re not alone in letting our minds wander to what awaits us August. Sports Illustrated just released it’s “Way Too Early Top 25”—and Coach Brohm’s Boilers are included. That got us thinking about Purdue’s 2020 football season. The following is a look back at how 2020 might unfold. “Might” is the operative word here. The purpose of this sort of writing—generally known as futurism—is not to predict exactly what will happen, but rather to help us think about what could happen: What are the possible outcomes, alternatives, endpoints and consequences of
current trends. With that as a caveat, enjoy these divergent recaps of the 2020 season.
A Golden Age
December 15, 2020—It seems impossible for our Boilermakers to be where they find themselves today. After all, things looked pretty grim after that 0-2 start, with last-minute losses to Nebraska and Memphis. Then came the nail-biting wins over Air Force and BC, and Purdue limped into a much-needed bye week at 2-2.
The 30-0 shutout of Rutgers—Purdue’s first shutout since 2011, and first over a D1 opponent since Tiller’s trouncing of Syracuse in 2004—showed us that Bob Diaco’s defense had all the makings of a monster. That was further underscored by the 38-12 win at Illinois. Those gameswould serve as a sign of things to come.
Riding a four-game win streak, Brohm’s Boilers rolled into Ann Arbor with a bit of swagger. But our high hopes were dashed by that gut-wrenching fourth quarter. I guess now we know why penalty flags match Michigan’s maize-colored pants. Bell’s impossible 38-yard TD catch—and everyone from Fox’s Tim Brando to the Big Ten front office said it was indeed a catch—would have put the good guys up by 12 with three minutes to go. But the replay official inexplicably overturned the ruling on the field—call it Mizzou déjà vu—and Brohm decided to punt rather than try a long FG into the swirling wind. Even after the officials stole those six points, Purdue still was in position to hold on for the win. But two roughing-the-quarterback penalties and a phantom PI in the span of five plays propelled #9 Michigan down the field for the game-winning score. Even Brando was left scratching his head: “You start to wonder at times like this what exactly the officials are seeing.” Before the weekend was over, a clever Purdue undergrad printed up t-shirts emblazoned with the words “Grand Theft Ann Arbor.” The shirts were everywhere at the next home game.
Yet Brohm somehow found a way to get his young team focused on the next game. The Wizard of West Lafayette would not only salvage the 2020 season, but turn it into a masterpiece.
Teetering at 4-3 heading into the Halloween game against Northwestern, Brohm’s Boys—and that’s what these freshmen, sophomores and a handful of veterans are—tore through the back half of the schedule like an F5 tornado. Some said it reminded them of the 2000 team’s Big Ten championship run. (That team went 5-1 down the stretch, beating Michigan, OSU and Wisconsin along the way.) Others drew parallels to the 2004 team’s first five games. (That team averaged 42 points those first five weeks, crushing Notre Dame in South Bend and beating Penn
State in Happy Valley.) But perhaps the best comparison is what Young and Herrmann did in 1979, when they closed out the regular season on a six-game tear and amassed 10 wins. That was the only Purdue team to reach the 10-win mark—until 2020.
Maybe it was all those lessons and mistakes and close calls the freshmen endured in 2019.Maybe it was Neal returning to anchor the D line—or Coach Holt departing. Maybe it was Brohm letting Jack the Snack call audibles (sometimes). Maybe it was the blessed disappearance of “Shout” from the break between the third and fourth quarters. (Replacing the hapless “Shout” with a rotation of No Leaf Clover, C’Mon Ride the Train and Gonna Know We Were Here was a stroke of genius.) Maybe it was the all-gold uniforms unveiled after the bye. (Nike calls them “Volt Gold.” But given how well our Boilers played in them against Rutgers and Northwestern,
we call them the “Midas Touch” unis. Something tells me we’ll see them again on January 2.) Whatever the reason, everything started to click after Michigan—even in the rain at Illinois.
Every play seemed to work. And seemingly everyone contributed: AOC relieving a concussed Plummer, and Durham stretching for 11 yards on fourth-and-nine to get Dellinger in range for the game-winner at #17 Minnesota; all three phases playing what Pat Fitzgerald called “a damn-near perfect game” against his Wildcats; Rondale doing everything on Senior Day to outlast #13 Iowa (a TD run, two TD catches and a TD pass from Brohm’s almost-unfair wildcat formation); Diaco using Bell to shut down Iowa’s Desmond Hutson in the fourth; Bell, Anderson and Wright making #15 Wisconsin pay for double-teaming Rondale; Plummer amassing 607 yards of total offense to take back the Bucket. And we can’t forget the wins before Michigan: the Ross-Ade crowd willing the defense to stop Air Force on that final drive; the “Moore Brothers” whipping Illinois (Rondale piled up 309 all-purpose yards and three TDs that afternoon, while Marcellus ran for 112 yards and two scores—on four carries); King and Zander combining for 230 yards at BC; the D’s five sacks, two picks and fumble recovery against Rutgers.
The takeover of Memorial Stadium and rushing of IU’s homefield underscored, yet again, that Purdue owns the Bucket series. By the time the dust had settled, Brohm’s Boys were 9-3 and ranked #14.
Then, we waited. To punch our tickets to Indianapolis, we needed a little help from Iowa, and Kirk Ferentz delivered with a win over Wisconsin. If 2019 was a nightmare that saw every bounce, every call, every injury report go against Purdue, 2020 had turned into a dream. Indeed, with Neal returning for a bonus year—and Rondale returning to his 2018 human-highlight-reel form—the 2019 season took on the feel of a three-month, open-to-the-public scrimmage. And 2020 became Brohm’s mulligan season.
Given the way Michigan had plowed through the Big Ten East, the oddsmakers favored the Wolverines. But as Boilerdowd and Little Boilerdowd reported on location, the Lucas Oil crowd favored Brohm’s Boys. Brohm never said a word about it publicly, but there can be no doubt that he told his team what had happened in Ann Arbor was criminal. In fact, GBI reported that Purdue’s first scoring play—Bell’s dazzling catch and fake hook-and-ladder pitch to Rondale—was named “Larceny Blue.” That play, along with the fake PAT that followed (the first of two fake FGs perfectly executed by Purdue in the first half), put Purdue up 8-0 just 45 seconds into the game. It also made it clear that Brohm was going to use everything in his arsenal—and that his team was motivated to prove it was the Big Ten’s best.
The Purdue offense put so much pressure on the Michigan offense that Harbaugh went for it on fourth down five times, converting only once. Harbaugh admitted those high-risk play calls—especially his fake punt at midfield just before halftime—were “influenced by how explosive Purdue is on offense.” Michigan’s failure to convert on the fake punt led to a Dellinger FG, and the Boilers were up 18-3 heading into halftime.
On the other side of the ball, not even the zebras could stop Big George this time, as he repeatedly raced around and over everything Harbaugh threw at him. Midway through the second quarter, Michigan began using two tight ends to try to slow down Karlaftis, to no avail. In fact, that only freed up Neal, whose strip-sack-fumble early in the fourth put the game—and Michigan’s starting QB—on ice. Revenge was sweet—a 35-20 win over mighty Michigan—and Brohm’s postgame parting shot about “how much we appreciate the modern locker-room facilities at places like Lucas Oil and Michigan Stadium” was a mic-drop moment for the ages. From “locker-gate” in 2017, to the “winnable game” in 2018, Jeff Brohm doesn’t forget.
Yes, we can play the what-if game—what if Marcellus doesn’t get tripped up at the 20 in Lincoln, what if Brohm goes for the kill with 2:55 left against Memphis, what if Bell’s TD stands at AnnArbor, what if the CFP’s expansion to eight schools happened this year rather than 2022? Andyes, there’s talk that USC and Notre Dame are targeting our coach. There are even rumors that Brohm will follow Lincoln Riley into the NFL. The always-accurate Dan Dakich tweeted this week that “Brohm to the Falcons is a done deal.” But those what-ifs and worries are for another day. For now, let’s celebrate our 10-win, 11th-ranked Boilermakers. Let’s tune in this weekend to see if Rondale wins the Heisman. Let’s bask in the glow of a Big Ten Championship. And let’s book our flights for Miami. There’s nothing sweeter than oranges in January.
(a different look ahead coming shortly…)
