Purdue Karma: Brohm applauds Boilers' resilience in 30-13 win
Earlier in the week Jeff Brohm said it didn't necessarily believe in the existence of karma balancing out throughout the course of a football season. He may now.
It seemingly just took Purdue coaches, players and fans just seven words over a head referee's microphone to feel like this would be an afternoon where all the breaks would be headed in their direction. Those seven words?
"The ruling on the field stands. Touchdown," voiced by referee Jerry McGinn following the replay review of Rondale Moore's 70-yard touchdown to give Purdue a 13-7 lead in the first quarter.
Brohm watched his team suffer through immature penalties, mental errors turn into costly turnovers and constant defensive struggles leading to an 0-3 start. Suddenly against its first ranked opponent of the 2018 season, Brohm saw a different football team in mind, body and leadership Saturday afternoon in a dominating 30-13 victory over No. 23 Boston College.
"They don't like losing as much as our fans don't like losing," Brohm said Saturday in describing the effort of his players.
Following the replay reversal of what many thought was a go-ahead touchdown reception by Jared Sparks last week in the loss to Missouri, one might forgive the Purdue faithful for thinking a bad break was coming again.
Once again the replay referee was debating whether Moore's knee touched the ground as he dodged a tackle attempt on a short curl route. After the missed tackle, Moore scampered around 67 more yards for the first of his two scores Saturday but even the freshman wasn't sure if he was down or not.
"I was looking at (Purdue wide receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard) and telling him, 'Um, hopefully not' because that was a break for us," Moore said about whether his knee touched the ground. "In high school, we don't have replay so there wouldn't ever be an issue. I'm a believer in (karma) now."
However, on a day where Purdue (1-3) won its first Homecoming game since 2011 and earned its largest win over a ranked team, McGinn's voice was a beautiful sound to most of the announced crowd of 47,119 and one very pleased head coach on the home sidelines.
"Yes. I feel like it was a level playing field today and I was happy with that," the second-year Boilermaker coach said with a smirk. "We made our breaks. Some games you're going to get the breaks and some games you won't. That's just the way it is. You’ve got to try to be good enough to overcome them and we weren't good enough to overcome them in the first three games."
Including Moore's 70-yard score, Purdue managed to outgain Boston College 258-44 in the second and third quarter and turn a 7-7 game into a 30-7 party for the home side.
"Normally the Rondale play would be a little early but maybe when the call stood on the field, maybe when it didn't get overturned, maybe that's when we knew it would be our day," quarterback David Blough said, laughing.
Following the Moore touchdown and the replay allowing it to stand, Boston College (3-1) saw its rushing attack only gain 23 yards after arriving in West Lafayette with the nation's No. 8 ground game.
"Our defense is built more on stopping the run," Brohm said. "We took them out of their game early on and they weren't able to recover."
Through an 0-3 start to the 2018 season, Purdue lost the turnover battle by a margin of four but forced four interceptions from Eagle sophomore quarterback Anthony Brown. The defensive line, which provided little to no push in three losses to Northwestern, Eastern Michigan and Missouri, managed to contribute to Purdue totaling four sacks and sealed the edges to allow linebackers to make eight tackles behind the line of scrimmage.
"You want (losing) to cause you to say, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore,’" Brohm said. "Let's not hide from our mistakes, let's not point the finger. Let's go about identifying the mistakes and going about trying to fix them."
After experiencing three home games where nothing seemed to go right early and late for the Boilermakers, the script was flipped and in doing so, brought a renewed energy.
"Last week we had one of our best weeks of practice even at 0-3 and that was important," Blough said. "I think everybody today saw when we, for the most part, take care of the ball, don't have penalties and get turnovers, then we can hang with really good teams."
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