Proof of life

 In the end, maybe it was just a numerology thing.

Purdue was playing a guy wearing 3 at quarterback, but then he got hurt. That handed the ball to a guy wearing 15, who was offered up as a live sacrifice to No. 23 Illinois in Champaign.

Except.

Except you know who else wore 15 at Purdue?

Drew Brees wore 15.

Mike Phipps wore 15.

I don't hold with much anymore in this world, but I think young Ryan Browne might have been channeling both yesterday for the Cradle of Quarterbacks.

All the live sacrifice did was steal some of that Notre Dame business, even though the Purdues lost in the end. He woke up the echoes, is what Browne did. Threw for 297 yards and three touchdowns on 18-of-26 passing. Pulled it down 17 times and rambled for 116 more yards. Cracked open some daylight for beleaguered running back Devin Mockobee, who crashed for 103 yards and another score on just 11 touches.

For one almost glorious afternoon, in other words, Purdue looked like an actual football team. The corpse Wisconsin embalmed 52-6 and Notre Dame humiliated 66-7 showed proof of life. Yeah, the Boilers lost again, because not even Browne/Brees/Phipps could make their DBs faster or their O-line block better. But it came down to one play, in overtime, against a ranked team on the road. 

That play was the last play, Purdue down 50-49 in overtime. Ryan Walters went for the two-point conversion and the win rather than another OT, and, please, no howling from the peanut gallery. You go for the win on the road. Always. Football 101.

You especially do that if you're Purdue, and you haven't been within a light year of a W in over a month. So Walters dialed up a rollout for Browne, and the O-line leaked again, and Browne got buried. 

Now, you can question why Walters didn't elect to just give the ball to Mockobee on that play, seeing how he was averaging almost a first down a carry. But Illinois was going to hit him with the entire state if Mockobee got the mail. Even Abe Lincoln would have been involved.

And so, the rollout. Everything else in the fourth quarter and OT had worked for Purdue -- in including a two-point conversion -- so why not that?

The Boilers were down 40-28, and then they scored. And then they pulled off an onside kick. And then they scored again, running the clock down to under a minute before they did.  

That made it 41-40, Purdue. The aforementioned two-point conversion made it 43-40. All Illinois could reasonably hope to do was tie it to force OT.

Of course, the Illini did. It looked like curtains for them when the Boilers sacked quarterback Luke Altmyer, and then they almost sacked him again. But Altmyer got away and chucked it far downfield, where it was caught close enough for Illini kicker David Olano to cash a sand-wedge field goal and send it to OT.

That set up a hell of a finish on a hell of a weekend for college football. Arizona State knocked off No. 16 Utah. Alabama almost lost again when South Carolina recovered an onside kick, but an interception saved the Tide, 27-25. USC almost got No. 4 Penn State in L.A., but the Nittany Lions survived 33-30 in overtime. 

No. 8 Tennessee beat unranked Florida in OT. No. 13  LSU beat No 9 Ole Miss in OT. No. 1 Texas blew out Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry game. And of course No. 3 Oregon clipped No. 2 Ohio State 32-31 in the big showdown in Eugene.

The Blob hates the term "instant classic," but that one was an instant classic. I think the lead changed hands eleventy-hundred times. Neither team ever led by more than a touchdown. In the end, you could reasonably say only the clock was the difference, because Ohio State was driving when it ran out of seconds.

For Purdue, the difference was one last failed play. Coaches love to say there's no such thing as a moral victory, but one last failed play gives Walters a lot more to build on than one last note of the national anthem.

Which is where Purdue has commenced failing too many times this season.