Purdue 46 Illinois 7: Boilers Blow Away the Spread

Purdue trailed 7 to 0 early on in the game.

Then we never looked back.

The Boilermakers hummed their way to a convincing victory heading into a B1G match up with Ohio State. The offense looked great, doing what we wanted throughout the game, using the pass to set the run up and using a couple of trick plays.

David Blough once again had a great day, dicing up the undermanned Illinois secondary, who really never stood a chance. Rondale Moore, Isaac Zico and Markell Jones also helped steady the offense, giving us a balanced attack.

In the first half it was the Isaac Zico show, where he had 5 catches for 127 yards and two touchdowns. After looking at replay, it looks like he could have had a third one with the toe tap in the 3rd quarter.

Once the game was in control, we just never looked back. Coming out of half time, with a couple of key Illinois offsides penalties, Purdue ended the drive with a Rondale Moore shovel pass, where he easily got the edge on the lethargic Illinois defense.

Coach Brohm and Co. had a brilliant game plan ready for an Illinois team who sometimes seemed like they didn’t want to be on the field. Hitting them on outside runs, inside runs, short passes, deep passes and trick plays.

Coach showed every wrinkle of the playbook today, making sure that Ohio State has everything to prep for. Wildcat, screens, trick plays, you name it we did it.

Defensively, the secondary struggled at times, but the constant pressure dialed up by Coach Holt lead to an off day of passing for Illinois. Illinos was never really able to astablish the run game that had game planned, as Purdue was stout up the middle with solid play from Lorenzo Neal Jr, Derrick Barnes, Cornel Jones and Markus Bailey.

The penalties added up today for Illinois, which lead to the Boilermakers capitalizing multiple times. This was a must win for Purdue who is trying to dig out from an 0-3 start, to get to bowl eligible. For now, it appears that the mental mistakes we made early on are passed us. Next up, we have O$U on National Television. Let’s show up and show out, give the nation a feel of what Boilermaker football is all about!