Ding-ding.
That's my tiny train bell. I ring it every time Purdue scores, and on Friday night against Washington, I rang it for three touchdowns, plus a couple of happy dings for field goals. I also rang it once by accident when I knocked it off my desk reaching for an eraser, which is how you know it was a long night.
I'm Barnaby Wolcott-Reese. I studied mechanical engineering, I draw every Purdue play on graph paper, and I keep the sheets in a binder labeled by week. Week 7 is now a very thick binder. It's thick because I drew the same play over and over, trying to figure out how you force five turnovers and lose by 12.
Engineer it. Let's open the binder.
Part 1: The Stress Test
Washington 38, Purdue 26, Friday night, Oct. 16, at Ross-Ade Stadium.
Here's the design brief. Washington came in on a three-game losing streak, with Elijah Brown making his first start for the Huskies after transferring from Stanford. And on the very first play from scrimmage, we intercepted him. Ding. Okay, no ding, that's not a score. But it felt like one.
We intercepted Brown three times in all, Hudauri Hines, Jojo Hayden and Smiley Bradford, and recovered two Washington fumbles. Washington coach Jedd Fisch said afterward that you're not usually minus-4 in the turnover battle and win the game. He's correct, as a matter of engineering. Usually you don't.
Here's how it went. Jacobo Echeverria Lozano kicked a 24-yard field goal. Antonio Harris ran 1 yard for a touchdown to tie it 10-10. And then came the best bounce of the year: a Washington punt bounced off the back of a Huskies player's foot, we recovered at the Washington 10, and on the next play Ryan Browne hit Fame Ijeboi for a 10-yard touchdown. 17-17. Ding-ding. Physics, friends. Angular momentum works for everybody.
But then a roughing-the-passer penalty on a third-and-10 incompletion kept a Washington drive alive, and Brian Bonner Jr. scored with 27 seconds left in the half. 24-17. Echeverria Lozano hit a 48-yarder in the third, Browne scored on an 8-yard run early in the fourth, and we were down 31-26. Then Trey Cooley broke a 53-yard touchdown run with 10:30 left, and the structure didn't hold.
The Load Analysis
The design flaws, honestly: Brown threw for 302 yards and three touchdowns on 21-of-27 passing despite the three interceptions. Washington outgained us 488 to 371. We ran for 98 yards, most of them on Harris's 59-yarder, and Ijeboi, who'd run for 195 yards against Minnesota the week before, managed 19 on 13 carries. Coach Barry Odom said Washington won at the point of scrimmage, and he's right. That's a load-bearing wall, friends, and it buckled.
The good components: Asaad Waseem caught nine passes for 116 yards. Hayden made nine tackles to go with his interception. Echeverria Lozano made both field goals. Browne threw for 273 yards. And our takeaways, five of them, tell me the defense has the right parts. It just needs better assembly instructions.
The Season Blueprint
We're 3-4 and 2-2 in the Big Ten. We lost a close one to Wake Forest, 38-36, then lost at UCLA, 52-38, and Notre Dame beat us 49-10. Then we won at Illinois 24-17 and beat Minnesota 41-13. The AP noted that we need to win three of our last five games to become bowl eligible. That's a design spec, friends. I like a clear spec.
Part 2: A Week at the Drafting Table, Then Happy Valley
Purdue has an open date this Saturday, Oct. 24. That's the honest schedule note. No game. A week to heal, sharpen the pencils and redraw the run fits.
Then on Saturday, Oct. 31, we go to Beaver Stadium to play Penn State. Kickoff time hasn't been announced. Halloween in State College.
I'll start with respect, because engineers respect a well-built structure. Penn State's pass defense is excellent, allowing just 141.3 yards a game. Tony Rojas, the linebacker, has 55 tackles and five sacks. Chase Sowell had 11 catches for 151 yards at Michigan on Saturday. Penn State leads our series 17-3-1, according to CollegeFootballData.com, and has won the last six meetings. I'm not hiding from that number. I'm writing it at the top of the page.
Now, the stress analysis.
Penn State is 3-4 and 0-4 in the Big Ten, and it has lost four straight. On Saturday at Michigan, the Nittany Lions ran 30 times for 65 yards, turned the ball over three times and lost a fumble at their own 16 with a chance to tie or take the lead. They allow 172.3 rushing yards a game. Ours, by comparison, allows 161.6, which is not something I'd normally brag about, but on graph paper, smaller numbers are smaller.
And there's a pattern I've charted. Penn State lost to Wisconsin by four, to USC by eight and to Michigan by three. Close games, all of them, and all losses. Purdue's football team has a nickname for this kind of game: the "Spoilermakers." It goes back to 1950, when Purdue broke Notre Dame's 39-game winning streak. We've got a long tradition of showing up where we're not expected and leaving with the win.
Who to Watch
Ryan Browne, quarterback: 1,822 yards, 10 touchdowns and three interceptions this season. Purdue is the Cradle of Quarterbacks, the school of Len Dawson, Bob Griese and Drew Brees, and Browne's got the arm for the family photo.
Fame Ijeboi, running back: 568 yards and nine touchdowns. If he gets going, ding-ding.
Asaad Waseem, receiver: 38 catches for 588 yards.
Jojo Hayden: 48 tackles, our leader. Keyshawn Burgos: 1.5 sacks, our team lead.
Rocco Becht, Penn State quarterback: 12 touchdowns and five interceptions, plus a lost fumble Saturday. Our defense has proven it can take the ball away. Now it has to finish the job.
Carson Hansen, Penn State running back: 278 yards and four touchdowns.
Field Notes: A Tale of Two Towns
West Lafayette. Population 44,595 at the 2020 census, perched on a bluff above the Wabash River. Purdue is the Cradle of Astronauts: 27 graduates have become astronauts, including Gus Grissom of the Mercury Seven, Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, and Eugene Cernan, the last. Ross-Ade Stadium opened in 1924 with a homecoming win over Indiana. Our mascot is a train, the Boilermaker Special, named for the trains that carried Purdue teams and fans to road games. And our band carries the World's Largest Drum, built in 1921. We put people on the moon and built the world's biggest drum. That's engineering.
State College. State College is a fine town. It's the largest borough in Pennsylvania, with 40,501 people, and the heart of what locals call Happy Valley. According to Wikipedia, the nickname came from the area's economic resilience during the Great Depression. Friends, I respect that. But by my calculations, Happy Valley is currently 0-4 in conference play. I'd suggest an engineering review of the name.
They're also very proud of the Berkey Creamery, which makes more than 100 flavors of ice cream and has a firm rule against mixing flavors in one cone. More than 100 options, and they still won't let you combine two. I've seen that kind of design philosophy before, friends. It's called Penn State's offense: plenty of parts, and none of them working together.
And Beaver Stadium is enormous, 106,572 seats. When they added the upper deck on the south end, it blocked the view of neighboring Mount Nittany, which, Wikipedia notes, had sentimental value for some fans. Engineers call that an unintended consequence. On Halloween, I'd like to deliver one more.
The Final Draft
Here's my final blueprint. We have two weeks to fix the run game. We have a defense that forces turnovers, a quarterback from the Cradle of Quarterbacks and a nickname, the Spoilermakers, built for exactly this kind of trip. Penn State has lost four straight and can't run the ball.
Engineer it. Boiler up! Ding-ding.