Going in to Saturday, this was a matchup of between two teams – the Purdue Boilermakers and Western Michigan Broncos – that were both trying to erase 1-11 seasons from a year ago. As for the Boilers, they had a fierce competition between Austin Appleby and Danny Etling to see who would be their starting quarterback. The sophomore from Terra Haute won Darrell Hazell’s vote of confidence, but it all comes down to how the Boilers run their offense on the football field and in the huddle. On Saturday, Etling was able put together a touchdown drive to give the Boilers a 7-0 lead and looked sharp the rest of the day en route to a 43-34 victory.
For a while Saturday, it looked like the game was going to be back and forth between each team’s offense and defense. Both squads were shaky to say the least, but that is to be expected with game one jitters. Had it been a Big Ten opponent, the Boilers may have been in trouble. Good thing it wasn’t. They have a couple more tune-ups to get stuff ironed out before Big Ten play starts. Other than a couple of mistakes with the defense and shoddy tackling, the overall report card this writer would give the Boilers is a B-minus.
There are a few questions this writer would like to have answered. How does Darrell Hazell expect to beat anyone with his shoddy tackling? How are the Boilermakers going to respond when Etling is trying his best to get the play off and no one is catching the ball for him? It happened a couple of times to him Saturday. Luckily, the Boilers were able to score enough points and win the game. Paul Griggs helped the Boilers by kicking some field goals when the team was behind, and led them to a big win over the Broncos.
