Purdue At Illinois: Video Highlights And Stats Dump

In trying to mix a few things up this week I'll embed some video of the better plays from yesterday, then get into a stats dump to see what a difference the big offensive day made:

ED NOTE: The video got stripped out, sorry.

Now, some fun stuff with stats:

• After yesterday's big Game Purdue has 1,020 yards and 10 touchdowns on the ground through six games. Through all 12 games last year Purdue rushed for 805 yards and 6 TDs, so the ground game is already much improved.
• All three of Austin Appleby's career TD passes have gone to Danny Anthrop.
• Akeem Hunt now has 446 yards rushing on the season. Last year he had a total of 464 with only one TD on the ground. He already has two TDs on the ground this season.
• Purdue already has four players (Appleby, Hunt, Raheem Mostert, and Keyante Green) with over 100 yards rushing for the season. Last year only three players (Hunt, Brandon Cottom, and Dalyn Dawkins) had at least 100 yards rushing.
• The Illinois defense is dead last in the league in scoring defense at 35.5 points per game. Indiana is 13^th at 28.6, so we took advantage of a really, really bad defense.
• How bad is that defense? They ranked 112^th national in total defense.
• That is better than their 119^th ranking in rushing defense.
• Purdue shot up the Big Ten rushing offense rankings to eighth at 170 yards per game. Last year they were dead last by a very large margin.
• Purdue now has a run defense better than Ohio State's. Let that sink in for a moment. It is still 10^th in the Big Ten at 135.2 yards per game with Nebraska, Minnesota, and Wisconsin loom, but that's still improvement.
• Purdue has the most return yards (162) of interceptions of any team in the league.
• In a credit to Thomas Meadows, Purdue leads the conference in net punting average at 41 yards per game. That's also a credit to his coverage units.
• Unfortunately, Purdue is dead last in net kickoff average at 34.1 yards per game. Kicking into the wind a lot at Illinois did not help.
• Purdue is third in the Big Ten with 16 sacks behind Rutgers and Michigan State.
• In the weekly "cover the damn middle of the field" category, teams are converting 49.5% of third downs against the Boilers. We gave up a 3^rd and 21 to Riley O'Toole, who had been standing on the sidelines freezing for three hours before that play. This is 118^th in the nation out of 125 FBS teams. So, yes, we're AWFUL on third downs defensively.
• Oddly enough, we're the best in the Big Ten at stopping fourth down conversions, stopping 8 of 9 on the season. This is fourth in the country. Figure that out.
• On to individual stats, Akeem Hunt's big day now has him seventh in the Big Ten in rushing with 446 yards rushing.
• Paul Griggs is third in the conference with eight made field goals (on ten attempts). Last season he was just 6 of 12.
• With 12 more tackles Landon Feichter is 12^th in the league with 56 on the season.
• Feichter and Frankie Williams are also both in the top 10 with two interceptions each.
• Antoine Lewis has now forced two fumbles, good for fourth in the B1G.