Purdue dispatched No. 21 Illinois and took aim on the Big Ten title game in Indianapolis with the most complete performance of the Jeff Brohm era.
— and let’s not — maybe we’d point out their handful of penalties, or their single turnover. But we’d be pointing that out only to acknowledge that perfection doesn’t come around often, and to say the following:at its finest this season.
We shall see. We could spend the rest of the story focusing on all the particulars of Purdue’s next two weeks, but let’s not."Crazy legs" Devin Mockobee, the baby ... giraffe? First drive, 3rd-and-12 from the Boilers’ 23. Purdue quarterback Aidan O’Connell throws a swing pass to Mockobee. He catches the pass and comes to a full stop in the same motion — picture a basketball player making a jump stop, only picture him in pads, with the wind blowing into the earhole of his helmet and a 235-pound linebacker headed his way.
O’Connell, who as a runner has never been called “crazy legs” or a “baby giraffe,” or much of anything beyond “slow," keyed two of Purdue’s three touchdown drives with long runs. I’m serious! Against the No. 1 defense in the country! One was a 9-yard keeper, an option where he held onto the ball to the surprise to the Memorial Stadium crowd of 45,574 and the Illinois defense of 11.
The result Saturday was a fourth-quarter seminar on defense, with the Boilers holding an Illinois ground game featuring national rushing leader Chase Brown to 10 rushing yards on six carries, and holding quarterback Tommy DeVito — on pace for the most accurate season in school history — to 55 yards on 5-for-11 passing. That included an interception at the Illinois 33 by linebacker Kieran Douglas on a pass tipped by one of those big men in the trenches, tackle Lawrence Johnson.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. That field goal by Fineran? It was set up by a gutsy call by Brohm: 4th-and-9 at the 32, still nearly 3½ minutes left. In that wind, Brohm rejected the idea of a 50-yard field goal to try an even lower-percentage play, a conversion on 4th-and-long.
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