Doyel: Was Iowa stunner another Purdue one-hit wonder? We still don't know about these Boilers.
Gregg Doyel
Indianapolis Star
It can work, this brazen and bizarre offense Purdue football coach Jeff Brohm is running in West Lafayette, where the Boilermakers are lining up three players behind center — don’t ask me to call them all “quarterbacks,” because they’re not — and doing things nobody else has ever done and hoping to confuse the opposing defense. It worked last week, when the Boilermakers famously beat the No. 2 out of Iowa.
Didn’t work Saturday, when Purdue’s bizarre offense served only to confuse itself in a 30-13 loss to Wisconsin.
Thing is, this is a different kind of Purdue team, a better kind of Purdue team, than we’re used to seeing in recent years. Granted, we’d all love to see a Purdue team with Zander Horvath at running back and, for spits and giggles, a healthy receiver named Rondale Moore. But Horvath is injured and Moore is gone to the NFL and we’re left watching this:
Jeff Brohm using quarterback Aidan O’Connell, quarterback Jack Plummer and quasi-fullback Austin Burton behind center. Can’t sit here and say it’s stupid, the usage of three (well, 2½) quarterbacks, because it wasn’t stupid last week in Iowa City, was it? The Boilermakers dominated the No. 2 Hawkeyes 24-7. That happened. You saw it.
But maybe that win at Iowa was a one-time deal, like that 49-20 shocker almost exactly three years ago against No. 2 Ohio State — the Tyler Trent game, I’m calling it — because, if you’ll remember, Purdue went 2-4 the rest of that season. Whatever lightning the Boilers bottled against the Buckeyes on Oct. 20, 2018, it fizzled out. If anything, it makes the Tyler Trent story more inspirational, but that’s neither here nor there.
At this moment, Purdue football is at a crossroads in every way imaginable: From the coach who wins just enough to make you think he’s the right man for the job, to the 2021 team that still remains in solid shape for bowl eligibility, to the starting quarterback, Aidan O’Connell, who can look so good or so bad, depending on how many times he can find star receiver David Bell.
O’Connell rarely found him Saturday. So you can guess how he looked.
A picturesque Purdue day, until...
Some things about this Purdue football season, you have to love.
The crowd on Saturday, for one thing. Recently renovated Ross-Ade Stadium was bouncing, sold out for almost a month, townsfolk and engineering majors and scores of Purdue students wearing onesies — dinosaurs, ducks, more — gathered together to force Wisconsin into three false-start penalties on the Badgers’ second drive of the game. Between the browning leaves and the drowning noise, this was a picturesque college football campus.
And that Purdue defense isn’t so bad-looking, either. The Boilermakers came into this game ranked fifth in the country in scoring defense, allowing just 14 points per game, and isn’t that what we’ve wanted for years from a Jeff Brohm-coached team? We kept thinking: Get just decent play out of that defense,and Brohm’s pyrotechnic offense will outscore a whole lot of opponents.
Well.
Purdue’s defense is outstanding, and while allowing 30 points to Wisconsin on Saturday may not look that way, keep in mind some additional facts: One, Wisconsin totaled just 342 yards of offense. Hold a team to that, and you like your chances.
Two, the Purdue defense made big plays all day, and one gigantic one. Cornerback Jamari Brown forced two fumbles, with defensive end George Karlaftis returning the second one — after Brown sacked Wisconsin’s Graham Mertz, jarring the ball loose — 56 yards for a touchdown. On that one, Brown smashed into Mertz, got off the ground, chased down Karlaftis and then turned and made the final block to spring Karlaftis for the touchdown.
That was the highlight of a busy day where the Purdue defense recorded two sacks and eight tackles for loss, and forced four fumbles.
I repeat: Purdue’s defense held Wisconsin to less than 350 yards, forced four fumbles and scored a touchdown. Most years, you tell us the Purdue defense will do that on a given Saturday, and we’re wondering just how big the Boilermakers are going to win.
This is not most years. Brohm has three quarterbacks (well, 2½). Which means he doesn’t have any one quarterback he trusts enough to run his offense.
This game Saturday, offensively anyway, was not pretty.
This was offense-by-the-numbers
At a certain point, something looked wrong. Jeff Brohm knows more football than each of us — he’s a savant, really — but every time he put Jack Plummer into the game at quarterback, he ran the ball. Every time he put Austin Burton into the game, he ran the ball.
And on almost every one of Aidan O’Connell’s snaps — 23 of the first 26 — he called a pass.
If I’m figuring that out, and I’m a baseball-and-soccer player from Mississippi, what do you think Wisconsin defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard was thinking? Leonhard, a former walk-on at Wisconsin who became a three-time All-American safety and then a longtime NFL player, is a rising star at age 38, a future head coach. He sees football like the great artists see oils and watercolors.
And Brohm was trying to beat him with finger paint?
It looked wrong. Like, is Jack Plummer hurt? Does Austin Burton actually know how to grab the football, put it behind his head and then sling it forward? A “pass,” you call that.
Well, late second half, after O’Connell threw his third interception to seal this defeat, Brohm puts in Plummer for the rest of the way and has him throw the ball. To confuse future defenses, maybe.
This should do the trick: Throw just one pass to David Bell until late in the second quarter, when you complete that one for zero yards. In all, find Bell just six times for 33 yards. That’s confusing.
It doesn’t help that Purdue’s offensive line can’t open holes for running backs (King Doerue and Dylan Downing, combined: 11 carries, 21 yards) or protect the passer (O’Connell and Plummer, combined: six sacks, minus-43 yards). Put all that together, and Purdue had 24 carries for minus-13 yards. The Boilermakers, striving to be unpredictable with that three (2½) quarterback offense, were as transparent as a James Patterson novel, with the same result: carnage.
Wisconsin, meanwhile, was showing that predictability can work if your players are physically dominant. With the unthreatening Mertz at quarterback, the Badgers attempted just eight passes all game — in the year 2021! — but ran it 51 times for 290 yards. Braelon Allen, a freshman sprinter who stands 6-2 and weighs 238 pounds and doesn’t turn 18 until January, ran for 140 yards on 12 carries, including a 70-yard burst. We’ll see him in the NFL in a few years. Junior Chez Mellusi, a Clemson transfer, had 27 carries for 149 yards. We may see him in the NFL as well.
Purdue will be seeing Wisconsin in its nightmares, because the Boilermakers have lost 15 consecutive games to the Badgers, and haven’t beaten them at Ross-Ade Stadium since 1997. This seemed to be the year — Purdue was ranked, Wisconsin wasn’t — but the same gimmick that beat the No. 2 out of Iowa circled the drain against Wisconsin.
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Gregg Doyel
Indianapolis Star
It can work, this brazen and bizarre offense Purdue football coach Jeff Brohm is running in West Lafayette, where the Boilermakers are lining up three players behind center — don’t ask me to call them all “quarterbacks,” because they’re not — and doing things nobody else has ever done and hoping to confuse the opposing defense. It worked last week, when the Boilermakers famously beat the No. 2 out of Iowa.
Didn’t work Saturday, when Purdue’s bizarre offense served only to confuse itself in a 30-13 loss to Wisconsin.
Thing is, this is a different kind of Purdue team, a better kind of Purdue team, than we’re used to seeing in recent years. Granted, we’d all love to see a Purdue team with Zander Horvath at running back and, for spits and giggles, a healthy receiver named Rondale Moore. But Horvath is injured and Moore is gone to the NFL and we’re left watching this:
Jeff Brohm using quarterback Aidan O’Connell, quarterback Jack Plummer and quasi-fullback Austin Burton behind center. Can’t sit here and say it’s stupid, the usage of three (well, 2½) quarterbacks, because it wasn’t stupid last week in Iowa City, was it? The Boilermakers dominated the No. 2 Hawkeyes 24-7. That happened. You saw it.
But maybe that win at Iowa was a one-time deal, like that 49-20 shocker almost exactly three years ago against No. 2 Ohio State — the Tyler Trent game, I’m calling it — because, if you’ll remember, Purdue went 2-4 the rest of that season. Whatever lightning the Boilers bottled against the Buckeyes on Oct. 20, 2018, it fizzled out. If anything, it makes the Tyler Trent story more inspirational, but that’s neither here nor there.
At this moment, Purdue football is at a crossroads in every way imaginable: From the coach who wins just enough to make you think he’s the right man for the job, to the 2021 team that still remains in solid shape for bowl eligibility, to the starting quarterback, Aidan O’Connell, who can look so good or so bad, depending on how many times he can find star receiver David Bell.
O’Connell rarely found him Saturday. So you can guess how he looked.
A picturesque Purdue day, until...
Some things about this Purdue football season, you have to love.
The crowd on Saturday, for one thing. Recently renovated Ross-Ade Stadium was bouncing, sold out for almost a month, townsfolk and engineering majors and scores of Purdue students wearing onesies — dinosaurs, ducks, more — gathered together to force Wisconsin into three false-start penalties on the Badgers’ second drive of the game. Between the browning leaves and the drowning noise, this was a picturesque college football campus.
And that Purdue defense isn’t so bad-looking, either. The Boilermakers came into this game ranked fifth in the country in scoring defense, allowing just 14 points per game, and isn’t that what we’ve wanted for years from a Jeff Brohm-coached team? We kept thinking: Get just decent play out of that defense,and Brohm’s pyrotechnic offense will outscore a whole lot of opponents.
Well.
Purdue’s defense is outstanding, and while allowing 30 points to Wisconsin on Saturday may not look that way, keep in mind some additional facts: One, Wisconsin totaled just 342 yards of offense. Hold a team to that, and you like your chances.
Two, the Purdue defense made big plays all day, and one gigantic one. Cornerback Jamari Brown forced two fumbles, with defensive end George Karlaftis returning the second one — after Brown sacked Wisconsin’s Graham Mertz, jarring the ball loose — 56 yards for a touchdown. On that one, Brown smashed into Mertz, got off the ground, chased down Karlaftis and then turned and made the final block to spring Karlaftis for the touchdown.
That was the highlight of a busy day where the Purdue defense recorded two sacks and eight tackles for loss, and forced four fumbles.
I repeat: Purdue’s defense held Wisconsin to less than 350 yards, forced four fumbles and scored a touchdown. Most years, you tell us the Purdue defense will do that on a given Saturday, and we’re wondering just how big the Boilermakers are going to win.
This is not most years. Brohm has three quarterbacks (well, 2½). Which means he doesn’t have any one quarterback he trusts enough to run his offense.
This game Saturday, offensively anyway, was not pretty.
This was offense-by-the-numbers
At a certain point, something looked wrong. Jeff Brohm knows more football than each of us — he’s a savant, really — but every time he put Jack Plummer into the game at quarterback, he ran the ball. Every time he put Austin Burton into the game, he ran the ball.
And on almost every one of Aidan O’Connell’s snaps — 23 of the first 26 — he called a pass.
If I’m figuring that out, and I’m a baseball-and-soccer player from Mississippi, what do you think Wisconsin defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard was thinking? Leonhard, a former walk-on at Wisconsin who became a three-time All-American safety and then a longtime NFL player, is a rising star at age 38, a future head coach. He sees football like the great artists see oils and watercolors.
And Brohm was trying to beat him with finger paint?
It looked wrong. Like, is Jack Plummer hurt? Does Austin Burton actually know how to grab the football, put it behind his head and then sling it forward? A “pass,” you call that.
Well, late second half, after O’Connell threw his third interception to seal this defeat, Brohm puts in Plummer for the rest of the way and has him throw the ball. To confuse future defenses, maybe.
This should do the trick: Throw just one pass to David Bell until late in the second quarter, when you complete that one for zero yards. In all, find Bell just six times for 33 yards. That’s confusing.
It doesn’t help that Purdue’s offensive line can’t open holes for running backs (King Doerue and Dylan Downing, combined: 11 carries, 21 yards) or protect the passer (O’Connell and Plummer, combined: six sacks, minus-43 yards). Put all that together, and Purdue had 24 carries for minus-13 yards. The Boilermakers, striving to be unpredictable with that three (2½) quarterback offense, were as transparent as a James Patterson novel, with the same result: carnage.
Wisconsin, meanwhile, was showing that predictability can work if your players are physically dominant. With the unthreatening Mertz at quarterback, the Badgers attempted just eight passes all game — in the year 2021! — but ran it 51 times for 290 yards. Braelon Allen, a freshman sprinter who stands 6-2 and weighs 238 pounds and doesn’t turn 18 until January, ran for 140 yards on 12 carries, including a 70-yard burst. We’ll see him in the NFL in a few years. Junior Chez Mellusi, a Clemson transfer, had 27 carries for 149 yards. We may see him in the NFL as well.
Purdue will be seeing Wisconsin in its nightmares, because the Boilermakers have lost 15 consecutive games to the Badgers, and haven’t beaten them at Ross-Ade Stadium since 1997. This seemed to be the year — Purdue was ranked, Wisconsin wasn’t — but the same gimmick that beat the No. 2 out of Iowa circled the drain against Wisconsin.
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