What a weekend.
For 4 hours Saturday, Purdue garnered nation attention. The type of national attention that is needed to close on recruits such as David Bell, Wandale Robinson and J.J. Weaver. The type of attention that gets people to see what is going on in West Lafayette, momentum that will carry into the 2020 recruiting class.
I will be the first to admit it, I didn’t give us much of a shot this weekend. But, I obviously wanted us to win, but who would have guessed we were going to be the best team on the field for 60 minutes, all 60 minutes of that game.
So, we learned a lot. We learned about players, coaches, our community and last but not least Tyler Trent.
So, lets dive into this.
The first thing we learned is what the definition of true Boilermaker is, Tyler Trent. Early last week, Tyler had emergency surgery, was throwing up on Friday evening and he still made it to the game to cheer on his Boilermakers. his perseverance, fortitude and down right bad assery, is what a Boilermaker is. David Blough said it as well. If you didn’t get a chance to watch the College Gameday Special with Tom Rinaldi, you need to go find it, get a box of tissues and watch it. It is truly moving.
The second thing we learned, Jeff Brohm is more innovative that Urban Meyer. Coach Brohm did a plethora of formations to get mismatches for our best player, Rondale Moore. Lining up in the backfield, motioning out to get a linebacker on him (prayers to the linebackers ankles he broke on a slant cut), lined him up in the slot vs press coverage, motioned him behind the backfield and dumped passes with a safety chasing him (the safety didn’t win) or running the set of 4 plays with jet motion - my personal favorite, the pin and pull jet, pretty sweet. After the game, Rondale wasn’t in the mosh pit on the 50, some say he was looking for his Mom to celebrate, he is 18 years old and doesn’t turn 19 until June. Let that sink in.
The third thing we learned is Nick Holt has the defense figured out and bought it. Early in the season during the 0-3 start, the defense didn’t look great. But, this young defense, in particular our linebackers are playing so well. Coach Brohm said they are young, but when they have coaches that want to win as much as our defensive coaches want to win, they show the passion that their coaches show. Nick Holt is a defensive genius, stay forever.
The 4th thing we learned is that the Boilermaker Community never left, Boilermaker Football left for a while. But, now that it is back, the Boilermakers are back in full force, with a sell out crowd, tailgate lots absolutely packed and all of the black and gold you see around town, people are back to supporting this program. A sell out crowd at a game with temperatures in the 20s, power outages across the state and trees falling all over (we had one fall right on top of a hilltop apartment, 20 feet from our tailgate). Coach Brohm has given us a program to be proud of and we are here for this team.
The last thing we learned, that Urban Meyer’s coaching was exposed, but he cannot hide from this issue. The horizontal passing game was destroyed by Purdue’s press man coverage. Their running game never picked up steam, with two running backs in the backfield who were highly recruited (no wonder why Sampson James Decommitted and went to IU). They threw the ball 73 times and rarely were any down field. He was not the best head coach on the field Saturday and it wasn’t even close.
It was a great weekend, Boilermakers around the globe are proud with this victory.