Points After: Purdue's 52-6 loss at Wisconsin
From bad to worse, such was the story of middling Purdue’s atrocious 52-6 loss at Wisconsin Saturday, the Boilermakers’ fourth consecutive defeat, this one being the worst yet.
Wisconsin hadn’t been merely average prior to Saturday, but that didn’t seem to matter all that much as Purdue again put itself on a blowout trajectory with its own mistakes, notably a fumbled punt that set Wisconsin up for an early led, then a series of penalties and defensive breakdowns thereafter. Wisconsin scored touchdowns on five straight drives between the final seconds of the first half into the second half. Wisconsin scored off all its second-half possessions, before just running the clock out at the end.
PDF: Purdue-Wisconsin box score
A few quick takeaways …
• Purdue may have crossed over the bridge of what you might call hopelessness here, because it was OK on offense to start the game, OK enough on defense, it generated turnovers for the first time, and found itself down 28-6 at half anyway, a hole that amounted to something much greater.
After that, it would be hard to view the rest of the game as anything other than the busses being warmed up.
No one thing did Purdue in here. It was everything, and it got very, very ugly.
• The penalties are out of control and a really bad look for the program. It wasn’t the volume this week as much as the impact. The pass-interference calls are a plague for a coaching staff committed to man-to-man defense that hasn’t been able to get its players to not be ravaged by flags.
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The defense has been a colossal disappointment this season, never worse than today.
Wisconsin put up nearly 600 yards. That’s a lot of garbage time, but things were really bad before garbage time.
The Badgers scored on touchdown throws of 69, 52 and 25 yards, as Braedyn Locke threw for 359 yards.
• The offense did some positive things early in the game under new play-caller Jason Simmons but that just just led to a new problem: Red-zone offense. Purdue settled for field goals twice inside the 10.
Nevertheless, Purdue managed only 216 total yards. Hudson Card threw for only 111 and Purdue again had no wide receiver do much of anything. Purdue was 1-for-11 on third down.
