No. 2 Ohio State stumbles at Purdue, gets blown out
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — D.J. Knox rushed for 128 yards and three touchdowns, David Blough threw for three more scores and Purdue shook up the College Football Playoff chase with a 49-20 blowout of No. 2 Ohio State on Saturday night.
The Boilermakers (4-3, 3-1 Big Ten) won their fourth straight overall, their second in a row over a ranked team and pulled off their biggest upset since taking down then-No. 2 Ohio State 28-23 on Oct. 6, 1984. Purdue also set a school record for points scored against the Buckeyes, besting the previous mark of 41 in 1967 and setting off a raucous celebration as the students rushed the field.
Mistake-prone Ohio State (7-1, 4-1) had its 12-game winning streak snapped, fell out of the Big Ten East
lead behind rival Michigan and now must fight away its way back into playoff position.
Blough outplayed Heisman Trophy candidate Dwayne Haskins Jr. on a night the Buckeyes didn’t reach the end zone until early in the fourth quarter.
Blough went 25 of 43 with 378 yards and sealed the victory with a 43-yard pass to Rondale Moore with 3:37 to play. It was Blough’s third straight 300-yard game and his fourth this season.
Haskins wound up 49 of 73, shattering the singlegame school records in both categories, and had 470 yards and two touchdowns and one interception. But he missed receivers down the field on a windy night at
Ross-Ade Stadium and was nearly picked off a couple of times before Markus Bailey scored on a late 41-yard interception return.
“Our defense played lights out,” Brohm said. “This team is hungry. They want to win. We still have a long way to go.”
The Buckeyes caused some of their own problems. They were called for 10 penalties and faced their largest halftime deficit of the season, 14-3, before giving up four scoring plays of more than 40 yards in the fourth quarter.
“My main message is we have to treat this like it’s life or death,” Buckeyes receiver Terry McLaurin said. “You have to have that type of mentality going into battle when someone’s trying to knock you off. If you don’t come ready, this
happens.”
Isaac Zico capped Purdue’s longest scoring drive of the season, 98 yards, with a spectacular one-handed catch before running out of bounds to make it 7-0 late in the first quarter. Ohio State responded by quickly marching down the field helped by two 15-yard penalties against Purdue’s defense before settling for a 24-yard field goal.
Blake Haubeil then missed a 33-yard field goal wide left with 1:51 left in the first half and Blough took the Boilermakers 80 yards in 84 seconds, using punter Joe Schopper’s first-down run on a fake field goal to set up a 9-yard scoring pass to Moore.
The Buckeyes tried to turn up the pace and the intensity in the second half but that didn’t work, either.