Thumb injury won't keep Knox from completing Purdue's 'fairytale' season

More: Purdue figures out how to fight | Bowl appearance provides more than just reward | Purdue's staff has good reception on the road | Brohm's three things ($) | Hunte's speech helped change course of season ($)

Analysis ($): Purdue delivered on Brohm's 'creative' promise in Year 1

Nothing was going to keep D.J. Knox from celebrating.

The thumb injury that knocked him out of Purdue's regular-season finale against Indiana wasn't going to keep him in the locker room — where he went in the second half to get a makeshift cast in place.

And the injury certainly wasn't going to keep him from wading in the midst of bodies that stormed the field after the Boilermakers' victory that secured the Bucket and a bowl berth.

“After we got the Bucket, nothing else mattered, even my hand, because I hadn’t had it in so long,” Knox said Wednesday, two days before Purdue starts bowl prep. “That was one thing that was eating me up inside. So when I finally got the chance, I was like I need to cherish this moment. I had to celebrate, run over there and get the Bucket.

“The way (the bowl berth) happened, it was like a fairytale to me. All the guys in the locker room game together, our backs are against the wall, and we have to get these games. We didn’t really have too much speak on it. Everybody just knew. It was just the aura within the building. Everybody knew we had to come and work hard and give it our all because we put in so much time. We believe in our coaching and we believe in each other as teammates, so we knew we could do it. We just had to go out and do it. That was the hard part about it. But we got through it, and we won the games we needed to win and look where we’re at now.”

Don’t expect Knox to miss the upcoming opportunity either.

He had surgery to repair ligament damage in the thumb — he said he injured the ulnar collateral ligament on the inside of his hand — and he’s not yet cleared to practice. But he hopes to be soon, and he’s eager to get on the field again.

Knox got hurt on a third-down stretch play in the third quarter where he stuck his left arm out to stiff arm the defender, but his thumb got caught in the defender’s helmet.

“It was pretty painful,” he said. “I got surgery immediately, and it’s coming along well.

“(The doctor) said it was like a gradual process for it to be 100 percent, being able to move without any pain at all. Probably a month, a month and a half, somewhere around there. We generally have about a month until the game time. I feel like I’ll be getting in the right spot right before the game.”

Knox said he won’t need any more follow-up procedures on the hand.

“That’s why we got it done as soon as possible so we could make sure we fix it the right way the first time, not just to hold it in place for the game,” he said. “We got it fixed the right way, and hopefully there shouldn’t any problems with it after the game and continue onto the offseason.”

Purdue already is down two running backs with Tario Fuller (foot) and Richie Worship (knee) out after having season-ending surgeries. That leaves Markell Jones, Knox and Brian Lankford-Johnson as the remaining options, but they’ve all started games before and have had either considerable or moderate production.

Jones is coming off a career-high 217-yard rushing game against the Hoosiers after he was forced into a workhorse load when Knox went down, and that total pushed him past Knox as the season’s leading rusher.

“It definitely is a very physical position,” Knox said. “But Lank and Markell are more than capable of holding down the job, even if I can’t go. But I definitely will do my best to get back in there and make it happen.” (SC)

Spencer Evans thinks he should be credited a third of a tackle.

He didn’t get one.

Instead, Purdue’s kickoff special and place-kicker received a strained MCL and hamstring, when he was the third man in — freshmen Derrick Barnes and Darius Pittman combined to wallop IU return man Whop Philyor — during his final kickoff of the regular season in the second quarter Nov. 25 vs. the Hoosiers.

“I feel like I deserve something,” Evans said Wednesday morning, joking about the play that sent him to the sideline. “Now, I didn’t make contact with (Philyor) until he was already on the ground. I think I have one tackle on the year, so maybe (it should be) one-and-a-third.”

Spencer limped off the field afterward, having to give way to backup Myles Homan for the last kickoff of the first half and all three in the second. But he says he’s feeling better now, needing perhaps 7-10 days before he starts kicking again. And he’ll be ready for the Boilermakers’ Foster Farms Bowl game vs. Arizona on Dec. 27.

Evans had the kind of impact he hoped when he transferred to Purdue late, arriving on campus only in early August, literally days before the start of training camp. He had spent an academic-only year at UT-Arlington following his departure from Baylor in 2015, wanting to find an FBS program where he could not only kick off, like he did with the Bears, but place-kick, as well.

The junior did both at Purdue, kicking off and sharing place-kicking duties with J.D. Dellinger. In a rather unique setup, the pair alternated attempts, both for extra points and field goals, making for what Evans described as a bit of a preseason feel.

“It was interesting, because you go into a game and instead of thinking, ‘Hey, I might get three or four field goals, I might get one.’ It’s a little difficult to wrap your head around sometimes," he said. "But at the same time, if you want to make it to the next level, that’s how it works in the preseason. You’re going to get on a team and it’s going to be kick-for-kick.

“… And throughout the season, we stayed neck-and-neck, and in the end, it’s preparing us for the long term. I think it helped us with some mental toughness.”

Evans hit 7-of-10 field goal attempts, while Dellinger made 9-of-12, with neither missing from inside 42 yards. And Evans put 34 of his 55 kickoffs into the end zone for touchbacks.

“It went well,” Evans said. “Obviously, there’s room for improvement. Next year, I’m going to shoot for more touchbacks, get that percentage higher, eliminate the return game if I can.

“And field goals, we’ll see what happens in the offseason. I think that J.D. had an excellent season, and you look back at the tape, there’s small things that I could get corrected. I think I had three misses on the season and the combined distances I missed by is about five feet, so we’re talking a small margin of error. Keep working in the offseason, after obviously looking to finish the year off strong and be perfect in the bowl game.” (KC)

Certainly all of Purdue's players heard the chatter last week when Coach Jeff Brohm's name popped up as a seeming legitimate candidate for the head coach opening at Tennessee. At one point Wednesday, there was a report Brohm actually took the job. That obviously was incorrect.

Knox, for one, said he tried to stay off social media — "fake news, real news, you never really know" — and didn't get too caught up in the rumors.

Mostly, because he felt like he knew where Brohm's heart was.

"I didn’t see Coach Brohm being the guy to just leave after a year," Knox said. "I really don’t feel like Coach Brohm was really worried about the amount of money. I don’t feel like all of that matters to him. When you talk to Coach Brohm, all you see is football. He eats, sleeps and breathes it. That’s one thing I knew about Coach Brohm.

"I feel like this is kind of like a challenge to him, (thinking), 'OK, yeah, Purdue probably is not the biggest football school, but I can get them there.' I kind of feel like that’s his personality, and I feel like that’s what he is training to do every day. Trying to get better, always incorporating different things into the schemes, whenever we play different teams, things like that. Coach Brohm is kind of a grind-it-out-in-the-mud type of guy. I kind of knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Then again, I don’t really know how all of that works. But I’m just glad that didn’t happen."

Knox knows Purdue's success prompted the pursuit of Brohm, and he knew even before Brohm accepted the job in West Lafayette he was a "hot commodity" in the coaching world. So Knox figures there will continue to be talk about Brohm moving on. He just hopes it doesn't happen soon.

"He’s building something here," Knox said. "Who’s to say that next year he doesn’t leave? I really don’t know what his plans are. But I definitely appreciate Coach Brohm for everything he’s done with this program, especially what we’ve been through in the last recent years.

"Up to this point, he’s done a great job of doing what he came here to do. So whatever he chooses to do, it’s up to him and I’ll respect him and support him, no matter what." (SC)

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