Purdue lit Mizzou the hell up, because that's the kind of thing Purdue does now

I’m not saying this to alarm anyone, but the Purdue Boilermakers are pretty fun this year, and I think they might be kind of good, too. The latest exhibit: the Boilers destroying every fiber of the Missouri Tigers’ spirit.

This post was first published at halftime, when the score was 28-3, Purdue. Here’s what we said at the time:

It’s clearly a blowout. But what’s jarring is the comprehensive fashion in which the Boilers have done it. They outgained Mizzou in the first half, 370 yards to 91. They possessed the ball for 21 of 30 minutes. They averaged 7.9 yards per play. Quarterbacks David Blough and Elijah Sindelar were 19-of-23 for 232 yards, and the Boilers ran all over Mizzou to the tune of 138 yards on 24 carries.

The final score was 35-3, Purdue.

The Boilers are not supposed to run through defenses like that. Now they’re doing it against an SEC defense, albeit a bad one that just fired its coordinator. What is this life?

The thing is: Purdue does this now. The Boilers are a lot better.

They’ve got a new head coach. Jeff Brohm led WKU to back-to-back Conference USA titles, and the Boilermakers hired him after canning Darrell Hazell midseason last year.

The program Brohm now leads has been the worst recruiter in the Big Ten for years. He’s added some transfers, but his roster is mostly the same as the one that went 3-9 last year. Before that, Purdue’s records were 2-10, 3-9, and 1-11. There’s still a talent deficiency, and Purdue won’t be a Big Ten West contender for a while yet, if ever.

But the Boilers are fun right now. Look what they did to Ohio in Week 2:

They won that game, 44-21. The week before, they took Lamar Jackson and Louisville to late in the fourth quarter before losing by a touchdown. The Boilers are spunky. They’re pioneers in a reverse flea-flicker trend that’s sweeping the nation.

Being wild on offense is a Brohm hallmark. He told me in July:

“I’ve been fortunate enough to be around a ton of offenses, a lot of them in the NFL, a lot of the West Coast, Bill Walsh stuff, and kind of jell all of it together and try to have some fun with it. The thing about me and where I’ve been, I try to have some creativity to it. We have some fun with it. We run trick plays a lot. We’re not afraid to try something. If it works, it looks great. If it doesn’t, move onto the next thing. So we do try to have fun playing the game from an offensive standpoint.”

Brohm’s a former XFL quarterback, so it won’t surprise you that he believes football should be fun. He’s infused Purdue’s offense with spread principles, and even when the Boilers aren’t running trick plays — which they can’t do all the time — they’re better. That kind of caution-to-wind attitude has been Brohm’s thing for years.

“I think it’s worked to this point,” he told me.

“Is it gonna work against tremendous competition? We’ll see. We got our work cut out for us. But we’re at least gonna have fun with it.”

Purdue’s definitely having fun with it. Mizzou is not.