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Three and Out: Purdue's loss to Fresno State

On3 imageby:Brian Neubert•09/02/23•

brianneubert

Purdue-Fresno State
Purdue-Fresno State (Chad Krockover)

In the first game of the Ryan Walters Era at Purdue, a heartbreaker, as visiting Fresno State scored the game-winning TD with 59 seconds left to best the Boilermakers 39-35.

Purdue had taken a 35-32 lead with 4:36 left on Devin Mockobee‘s 11-yard TD run, but Purdue’s defense couldn’t hold it.

On an afternoon full of explosive plays, Hudson Card connected with Deion Burks for two touchdowns and a crucial 44-yard completion during a go-ahead drive.

Burks caught four balls for 152 yards.

Shortly after missing a 21-yard field goal at the end of an eight-minute drive, Fresno State forced a Purdue three-and-out, then booted a walk-off 52-yarder to cut the Boilermakers’ halftime lead to 21-17.

Tyrone Tracy, opened the second half, by returning the kickoff 98 yards for Purdue’s first KOR TD since 2013.

PDF: Purdue-Fresno State statistics

• This was all about Purdue’s inability to get off the field defensively on third-and-long. Fresno averaged almost 19 yards during a streak of four third-down conversions of nine yards or more, including a key TD. Part of it was the Bulldogs making difficult, contested throws and catches against man coverage, but blown tackles loomed even larger.

• Purdue is not built to run the football between the tackles and that was beyond apparent on this day, never more so than the fourth-and goal failure from the Bulldog 1 that would have given Purdue the lead back with around eight minutes left.

That was a bold call by Walters to go for that fourth down, but at the same time, there was no overwhelming reason to believe could get the ball back enough to score twice and its only field goal try of the day had missed.

It sure didn’t seem like Purdue was keen on using designed runs for Card.

• Purdue obviously has some work to do defensively, allowing almost 500 yards of offense and just being unable to get off the field on money downs. There were way too many chunk plays for Fresno.

But the offense and special teams showed some real flashes.

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