You couldn’t have asked for a much better ending to this oh-so surprising season.
Purdue 44, Indiana 7.
The Boilermakers dominated Indiana. And the win allowed the Boilermakers to win back the Old Oaken Bucket for the first time since 2018. To top it all off: This was the program’s first eight-win regular season since 2006.
Take a bow, Jeff Brohm.
It has been a season of firsts, with the program’s first AP ranking since 2007, first College Football Playoff ranking ever and first road win vs. an AP top two team since 1974.
On and on it went.
When the season began, most pundits thought this would be a six- or maybe seven-win team. But the Boilermakers blew all prognostications by notching eight wins to be the Big Ten's second most surprising team behind Michigan State.
Now, it is off to a bowl game with a shot to win nine games for the first time since 2003.
Before we let our minds drift off to possible bowl destinations, let’s savor what we have seen the last 13 weeks.
Brohm has flipped the script on this program, leading the team to its first bowl since 2018 and restoring the hope he kindled when he arrived in 2017 and won right away before a 4-8 mark in 2019 and 2-4 record in 2020.
Credit Brohm for always looking for solutions this fall, as he brought the offense out of a funk that plagued it the first half of the season. He tried a multi-QB system, switched starting quarterbacks … anything to spark the offense. And, it worked.
“You just got to figure out ways to get that done every week,” said Brohm. “We realized we weren't scoring the points we wanted. And we just kind of changed some things up, made some slight adjustments. Try to help get the quarterback in a rhythm. Tried to tweak a few things here and there.”
If not for experimenting with new things, this season may have been lost. Instead, the Purdue offense found what worked—thank god for Aidan O’Connell—and turned into a good complement to a defense that played consistently well all season.
"You've got to do a lot of the small things right in order to have a chance," said Brohm. "I just think some improvements we made on offense during the year went on and helped us. Without question, improvements we made in the offseason to our defense has helped us and I think even though special teams has had its moments here and there, we've gotten better as the year went on, and it helped us.”
It has been a total team effort. And one of the most fun seasons I can recall in recent memory … and it’s not finished yet.
Purdue 44, Indiana 7.
The Boilermakers dominated Indiana. And the win allowed the Boilermakers to win back the Old Oaken Bucket for the first time since 2018. To top it all off: This was the program’s first eight-win regular season since 2006.
Take a bow, Jeff Brohm.
It has been a season of firsts, with the program’s first AP ranking since 2007, first College Football Playoff ranking ever and first road win vs. an AP top two team since 1974.
On and on it went.
When the season began, most pundits thought this would be a six- or maybe seven-win team. But the Boilermakers blew all prognostications by notching eight wins to be the Big Ten's second most surprising team behind Michigan State.
Now, it is off to a bowl game with a shot to win nine games for the first time since 2003.
Before we let our minds drift off to possible bowl destinations, let’s savor what we have seen the last 13 weeks.
Brohm has flipped the script on this program, leading the team to its first bowl since 2018 and restoring the hope he kindled when he arrived in 2017 and won right away before a 4-8 mark in 2019 and 2-4 record in 2020.
Credit Brohm for always looking for solutions this fall, as he brought the offense out of a funk that plagued it the first half of the season. He tried a multi-QB system, switched starting quarterbacks … anything to spark the offense. And, it worked.
“You just got to figure out ways to get that done every week,” said Brohm. “We realized we weren't scoring the points we wanted. And we just kind of changed some things up, made some slight adjustments. Try to help get the quarterback in a rhythm. Tried to tweak a few things here and there.”
If not for experimenting with new things, this season may have been lost. Instead, the Purdue offense found what worked—thank god for Aidan O’Connell—and turned into a good complement to a defense that played consistently well all season.
"You've got to do a lot of the small things right in order to have a chance," said Brohm. "I just think some improvements we made on offense during the year went on and helped us. Without question, improvements we made in the offseason to our defense has helped us and I think even though special teams has had its moments here and there, we've gotten better as the year went on, and it helped us.”
It has been a total team effort. And one of the most fun seasons I can recall in recent memory … and it’s not finished yet.
