The Eastern Michigan Eagles Derail the Purdue Boilermakes

Eastern Michigan traveled down to West Lafayette with the hope of picking up their second Big Ten victory in just as many years. I don’t think many people gave them a chance and if this were five years ago, I would have been one of those people. They slogged it out in the rain and ended up on the positive side of the scoreboard.

Eastern Michigan’s senior quarterback Tyler Wiegers was pretty solid by throwing 20 for 28 for 312 yards. He threw one touchdown and one interception. The Eagles running game was almost non-existent, as they only gained 69 yards on the ground. It wasn’t for lack of trying though. Blake Banham fell 1 yard shy of having back to back 100 yard receiving games but the hero of the receiving corps was Mathew Sexton who caught a 75 yard pass for a touchdown.

Purdue was lacking a passing game, where they only managed to get 135 yards in the air. They made up for that by gaining 341 yards on the ground. That particular attack was led by D.J. Knox with 152 yards.

Eastern Michigan was down by two points at the half. The game remained at a Boilermaker 12-10 lead until Eastern Michigan’s Breck Turner scored a touchdown to make it 17-12 in favor of the Eagles with 7:56 left in the game. Purdue brought it back to a two point win after a 45 yard run by D.J. Knox. It looked like the Boilermakers would keep the lead after they sacked Tyler Wiegers but an extra shove by Cornel Jones turned it into a roughing the passer call and gave Eastern Michigan a fresh set of downs. Again, it looked like the Boilermakers were going to keep the ball when they got called for pass interference. That put the ball on the Purdue 20 yard line with less than a minute left. After a few running plays to get the ball closer, Eastern Michigan’s Chad Ryland booted the ball through the uprights to make the final score 20-19 as the clock read 0:00.

Kenneth Bailey