On a cold, windy, and wet night in Ross-Ade Stadium Purdue fans were hoping to see their team’s third straight Big Ten win something that they hadn’t done since 2022. Instead, what they saw in the first half was an offense that could not get going, a defense that was generating turnovers but couldn’t slow the Washington offense, and refs who didn’t seem to know what roughing the passer was.
Joe Tiller Memorial Player of the Game (JTMPOTG): Sort of hard to find a winner in this one but I’m going against
my obvious offensive player bias and will give this to Jojo Hayden. He grabbed an inteception, had two QB hurries, and 9 tackles.
To open this one up Washington won the toss and decided to take the ball. Likely trying to get their backup QB Elijah Brown some confidence in the early going they took a shot deep down the field on their first play. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for Purdue, Hudauri Hines was able to jump for an underthrown ball and come down with it for the Boilermakers. One play, one interception. You love to see it. Hines was actually carted off the field after this, no word as of yet on his status. The Purdue offense had been dominant the last two weeks but it wasn’t to be in the first half. Purdue ended their first drive facing a 4th and 2 and chose to go for it…out of the shotgun…again. It failed to convert and gave the ball back to the Huskies. Washington would promptly go down and score to go up 7-0 early. Purdue had 6 drives in the first half, not including the one that ended the half with just one play, and scored on three of them. Not bad but you have to consider the circumstances. Purdue’s defense grabbed two interceptions and Purdue was only able to convert those into three points. The second interception gave Purdue the ball in the red zone, where Purdue has really struggled this season, and resulted in a drive of just 14 yards before settling for a field goal. Purdue would get one more turnover in that first half after Purdue punted the ball away and Washington touched it. Surprisingly that was the second such muffed punt that Purdue has recovered this season. A rarity to be sure.
Purdue immediately converted that into a TD with one pass to Fame Ijeboi.
Purdue’s best offensive drive of the first half needed some help from a (questionable) defensive pass interefence in the end zone. That drive though included a 60 yard run from Antonio Harris which is Purdue’s longest run of the season. That run actually broke down at the line but Harris had the presence of mind to reverse field and wind up sprinting down the sideline with none other than Ryan Browne blocking for him. He nearly got to the end zone but would eventually punch it in from 1 yard out.
The Purdue defense was struggling mightily to contain the Washington offense. They went into halftime with 302 yards of offense. In the first half Washington had 9 big plays for 218 yards. That’s bad folks. This was reminiscent of the Purdue defense we saw earlier in the season. Now, the turnovers from the defense were the only reason that Purdue was in the game at halftime, but the defense couldn’t get stops otherwise. Of course, the refs didn’t help as Purdue was called for an egregious roughing the passer that set up Washington’s final touchdown of the half. I mean just look at this, do you think this is roughing the passer “with weight” Because I don’t.
Purdue headed into the locker room down 24-17 and was getting the ball to start the second half. The offense and defense both needed to perform better if Purdue was gonna walk away with the win.
Purdue did not in fact walk away with the win. The second half was ugly on both sides of the football for the Boilermakers. Every time it looked like Purdue was going to find a way back into the game something came back to bite them. Whether it was an easy drive for Washington, just two plays and 75 yards in 48 seconds immediately after Purdue had cut the lead back to one possession, or if it was a Ryan Browne interception as Purdue was desperate to score with 7:07 left in the 4th down 38-26. Both the offense and the defense made huge mistakes for this team tonight. You can’t lay the loss at any one person or any one unit’s feet. Just an all around failure. This box score had some head scratchers. Purdue grabbed 5 turnovers! Yes, 5! They had a total of 6 turnovers coming into this game. Now, what did Purdue do with those 5 turnovers? Not as much as you would have hoped. Here are the results of the drives after the Washington turnovers: Turnover on downs, FG, TD, FG, Turnover on downs. That’s simply not good enough. Purdue was never able to get their running game going with Fame Ijeboi finishing with just 19 yards on 13 rushes. Browne would finish the game 21-41 for 273 yards and 1 touchdown versus 2 interceptions. Overall a bad day for nearly everyone on the offensive side of the ball.
On the defensive side of the ball all Washington had to do was swing the ball out wide and Purdue could not stop them. Washington would end this game with 488 yards of total offense and 302 yards passing. Just a 180 degree turnaround from where the Purdue defense was the last two weeks. Or would it have been just a really slow 360 that took three weeks to complete? The Purdue defense is back to who we thought they were.
This was the absolute worst result for the football program. Your program had been in the basement for years and then. suddenly wins two in a row with a real shot to win three in a row. In front of a crowd of 50K Purdue just lays an egg. The stadium emptied out as the fourth quarter dwindled down and it felt like the bad old times again. I get that Purdue wasn’t going to run the table throughout the rest of the season but they needed to keep finding ways to win the winnable ones. And this? This was a winnable one. Unforatunely, it looks like Ryan Walters took the same magic against his former team that he had at Purdue (I use the term magic loosely, and best). I know it’s not the only issue, but it also should be noted that both Hines and Correa left this game with injuries and it truly showed how much they were missed. Purdue could not recover from losing two starters on a defense that already is not made up of world beaters.
Purdue now heads into their bye week with a number of questions to answer. Such as, which is the real Purdue defense? Which is the real Purdue offense? What does a horseshoe do? Are there any horse socks? Is anyone even reading this? Oh well, Purdue falls to 3-4 on the season and will return to action on October 31st when they face Penn State.
