Purdue had the perfect cure for Northwestern’s Rose Bowl fever: Drew Brees.
The Heisman Trophy hopeful threw for 239 yards and five touchdowns Saturday and ran for another 56 yards as No. 21 Purdue beat No. 17 Northwestern 41-28.
It was the first Big Ten Conference loss for the Wildcats (5-2, 3-1), whose surprising start had them flashing back to their 1995 Rose Bowl season.
“Drew gets an A-plus with the win,” said Vinny Sutherland, who caught two of Brees’ scoring passes.
Brees is only 168 yards shy of tying Iowa’s Chuck Long for the Big Ten record for passing yards (10,461). It’s the only major passing record left for Brees, who already has set marks for touchdowns (81), completions (897), attempts (1,459) and total offense (11,021 yards).
“He’s a special player,” Northwestern coach Randy Walker said. “He makes a couple of shots and you just go, `Wow.”‘
And there’s more to Purdue’s offense than Brees. Montrell Lowe rushed for a career-high 174 yards, including a 50-yard run on Purdue’s first series. Sutherland caught eight passes for 84 yards, and John Standeford had six catches for 74 yards and three TDs.
Zak Kustok was 18-of-28 for 260 yards and two TDs, but he also threw two interceptions. Damien Anderson, who’d rushed for 685 yards in the last three games, was held to just 55 yards in 17 carries.
The Wildcats have been confusing opponents all year with their spread-out, no-huddle offense, and it looked like more of the same early against Purdue (5-2, 3-1). With Kustok threading bullets through coverage, the Wildcats scored on their first two possessions and had 128 yards of offense in the first quarter.
But the Boilermakers shut Northwestern down from the second quarter until the Cats scored two token TDs in the fourth quarter.
“I’ve had to warn out kids about comparisons [to the 1995 Rose Bowl team],” Walker said. “I just didn’t do a very good job because we didn’t play our best or most focused game. “
But the Wildcats still have some hope left. Minnesota upset Ohio State on Saturday.
While much has been made about NU’s multi-option offense, it was Joe Tiller who first shook up the Big Ten with his “Basketball on Grass” scheme. And Purdue showed Saturday it has a pretty good running game too.
After tying the game 14-14 in the second quarter on Brees’ 7-yard pass to Standeford, the Boilermakers opened the second half with three unanswered touchdowns.
“I don’t know what happened when it was 14-7,” Walker said. “When you get a couple of early scores like that, you worry that it gets a little easier than you want it to be. I don’t know if that happened today, but we lost momentum.”
