Purdue 20 Northwestern 27: Not Sure What to Say
By: Dakota Isgrigg | November 16th | @dakota_isgrigg | @BoilerInTexas
I decided to take a few days to reflect on the Northwestern loss and to try and not let my emotions of the game influence my thoughts and analysis of this one. The one theme that persisted even up to the moment I’m posting this article is that this was a disappointing outcome for the Boilers. After an impromptu bye week due to the Wisconsin game being canceled Purdue had two full weeks to prepare for this game and then the performance on the field was a little rusty. Let’s talk about it.
Offense
For an offense that boasts as many weapons on the outside that Purdue does, it really felt like there was ever only one option for Aiden O’Connel to throw to, and that was David Bell. While Bell is an otherworldly talent, for an offense to truly succeed you need to spread the ball around and keep the defense guessing. There were many times in the first half where AOC seemed to only trust Bell to catch the ball and often forced it towards the Sophomore WR when facing pressure. Milton Wright got involved later in the game connecting with AOC on the final Purdue touchdown on a great throw and catch but there wasn’t much outside of that. AOC had an okay day finishing 28-51 for 263 yards and 2 touchdowns. On paper, a relatively successful day for sure.
The bigger issue on the day was the rushing attack. Purdue had managed to get Zander Horvath over 100 yards in both of their first two games of the season and were looking to keep the offense balanced in this one facing a better Northwestern defense. It didn’t happen as the Wildcats held Horvath to 21 yards on 10 carries for the game. Purdue as a team only managed 2, yes one… two, yards on the game (adjusted for sacks) on the ground. One potential bright spot is that we did see the season debut of King Doerue who has missed up to this game with an injury. He only carried the ball once for no gain though so who knows what level he is actually at at this point.
Throwing the ball was much harder on this day than it had been up to this point on the season. You know this when Horvath actually led the team in receiving yards routinely catching check down passes from AOC when no one else managed to get open, or the line didn’t hold up long enough for anything else to develop. Horvath hit 100 yards even, David Bell finished with only 78 yards and no scores. The two receiving touchdowns were caught by Milton Wright and Garrett Miller. The score by Miller came on a 4th down conversion that Miller took 40 yards to the house for his first catch and first score in his Purdue career, what a way to start huh? Overall, the Northwestern DB’s were allowed to play a physical game and Purdue couldn’t really overcome that enough to find the success through the air like they had in games past.
The offensive line got their biggest test of the year and while this group has still vastly improved over last season, there is still a long way to go. Northwestern got to Aiden O’Connel 3 times for sacks, and managed four total tackles for loss on the day as well. The OL wasn’t able to provide the same level of protection we had seen up to this point and it showed in the results.
There are other things I can mention that definitely played into the performance of the offense in this one but I will cover those in the last section in the article.
Defense
We have known that the defense is the weaker side of the ball, but at the same time, they have overcome this so far and done enough to get the job done so far this season. In this game they were also less than 100% as big George Karlaftis was injured during the Illinois game and it seemed that while GK would be in uniform, he wasn’t expected to play the whole game. That said, the defense still started slow before picking up later in the game. It was a really up and down day for the defense as on the first possession of the game, Northwestern marched down the field converting some third downs before scoring relatively easily. The defense held Northwestern to under 300 yards of total offense, so it wasn’t all bad all night. They also managed to intercept Peyton Ramsey on a tipped pass to even the turnover margin back to even.
The defense managed to get 11 tackles for loss but unfortunately couldn’t get to the QB at all and finished with 0 sacks. This game highlighted some of the deficiencies of this defense as a true bend-don’t-break scheme. Bob Diaco decided against sending consistent pressure, opting to only rush 3/4 to varying success. This would have been fine, but we also saw receivers/tight ends in space down field with no one within 5-10 yards of them. It was frustrating because the front wasn’t getting pressure, and the secondary wasn’t able to cover all of the down-field threats. This was a part of the game where George Karlaftis was missed greatly.
At the end of the day, the defense did enough to keep Purdue in this game and they should be recognized as such. The defense got better as the game went on and the offense let them down in the end.
Coaching
Going to leave this short and to the point. Some of the coaching decisions in this game left many fans frustrated and upset. While there was some inclement weather that played a factor in the offense, there was no reason to expect that it should still have as much an impact on the play calling as it did. There were very few creative play calls, few misdirection plays, and moments that left fans scratching their heads. The play calling overall was very vanilla all day and CJB showed little interest in mixing things up after seeing the offense struggle. It was also apparent in the second half that AOC was struggling under center and many fans on Twitter were calling for a change to try and spark the offense. Brohm even mentioned after the game that he did consider putting Plummer in before ultimately deciding against it.
At the end of the day, I still support Jeff Brohm being the head coach of the Purdue Boilermakers football team. That said though, he still has some issues of his own that he needs to figure out. Playing in anything other than perfect conditions has been a reoccurring theme in his tenure, reverting to very vanilla play calling over creativity that has given the Boilers success, and even the decisions regarding letting the public in on the status of injured players. The last one being a bit of an ongoing sore spot amongst the fans.
Once again, I think CJB is a very good coach for Purdue and Purdue is better because he is here. But there are still areas of improvement that need to be addressed.
On to Minnesota on a short week. Let’s bounce back.
As Always, Boiler Up, Hammer Down, Hail Purdue
