• Football
  • Purdue Boilermakers Host Penn State for a Big Ten Weeknight Season Kickoff Game

Purdue Boilermakers Host Penn State for a Big Ten Weeknight Season Kickoff Game

Details
Football

Purdue opens its 135th season of football with a Thursday night bout against Penn State in front of a packed Ross-Ade Stadium and a national audience on FOX. Kickoff is set for 8:05 p.m. ET.

Ross-Ade Stadium will be blacked out Thursday night. The Boilermakers will host their first Blackout game since 2018 when Purdue thumped No. 3 Ohio State.
 
BROHM AND THE BOILERMAKERS: YEAR 6
• Jeff Brohm enters his sixth year at the helm in West Lafayette.
• Brohm boasts a career record of 58-39, a .598 winning percentage, with nearly half of those wins coming at Purdue.
• A program with a combined nine wins in the four seasons prior to Brohm's arrival, Purdue matched that output in one season – a memorable 2021 campaign.
• The Boilermakers have made three bowl appearances in five years under Brohm, joining Joe Tiller and Jim Young as the only Purdue coaches to accomplish that feat.
• Over Brohm's five seasons at the helm, the Purdue offense has averaged 419.8 yards per game and 27.6 points per game.
• Purdue has had three All-Americans since Brohm's arrival; the Boilermakers only had three All-Americans from 2004-17 (13 seasons).
• Boilermakers have won five individual Big Ten honors under Brohm's guidance: Big Ten Freshman of the Year (Rondale Moore – 2018, David Bell – 2019), Big Ten Wide Receiver of the Year (Moore – 2018, Bell – 2021), Big Ten Tight End of the Year (Brycen Hopkins – 2019).
 
COMMENCING WITH CONFERENCE
• The Boilermakers have a 78-50-6 record in season-opening games. Purdue has never faced Penn State to start the year.
• Purdue has opened the season with a conference game 17 times previously, the last coming in 2018 against Northwestern.
• Purdue is 7-10 when facing a conference opponent to start the year and 5-10 against Big Ten opponents - three of those losses were to the University of Chicago, which left the Big Ten in 1946.
 
THURSDAY NIGHT OPENER
• The Boilermakers are scheduled to open a season on a Thursday for the third time in program history and play just their third Thursday game since 1904.
• Purdue holds a 6-7-2 record when playing on Thursdays.
    (2-5-2 at home, 3-1 on the road, 1-1 at neutral sites)
• Eleven of Purdue's 15 Thursday games have been played on Thanksgiving.
 
99th SEASON AT ROSS-ADE STADIUM
• The Boilermakers will call Ross-Ade Stadium home for the 99th season in 2022.
• A roughly two-year construction process for $237,500 ($3.76 million) with funds raised by Purdue alumni David E. Ross and George Ade helped replace Stuart Field, which had hosted Purdue Football since its inception.
• Ross-Ade Stadium had the perfect dedication and opening, a 26-7 drubbing of Indiana for homecoming on Nov. 22, 1924.
• Originally seating 13,500 with an additional 5,000 standing spots, Ross-Ade Stadium now can hold up to 61,320, including non-ticketed personnel.
• Purdue has an all-time record of 294-198 at Ross-Ade Stadium.
 
THE LAST BLACKOUT
• Purdue will hold its first Blackout game since 2018 when it faced then-No. 2 Ohio State.
• The Boilermakers rolled to a 49-20 victory over the Buckeyes.
• Quarterback David Blough threw for 378 yards and three scores, Rondale Moore caught two touchdowns to finish with 170 yards on 12 receptions, D.J. Knox rushed for 128 yards and three touchdowns and the defense kept Ohio State out of the end zone until the fourth quarter.
• Tyler Trent served as an inspiration for the Boilermakers that night, and his legacy lives on in many ways within the program, including the Tyler Trent Student Gate on the northeast side of Ross-Ade Stadium.
 
2021: A HISTORIC SEASON
• Purdue finished the 2021 season with nine wins for the first time since 2003, when the Boilermakers also were 9-4.
• The nine wins were second-most in program history, as the Boilermakers record at least nine wins for the 12th time in the
team's 134-year history.
• Two of those victories were over previously unbeaten No. 2 Iowa (Oct. 16) and No. 3 Michigan State (Nov. 6), giving the Boilermakers two wins over Top 5 teams for the first time since 1960.
• Purdue finished with a record of 6-3 in Big Ten play, the most conference wins in a season since the 2003 team went 6-2.
• The Boilermakers tied for second in the Big Ten West, finishing in the division's top three for the third time in five seasons under head coach Jeff Brohm (2017, 2018, 2021).
• Purdue won five games away from home for the first time since 1943, going 5-2 away from Ross-Ade Stadium.
• Purdue entered the College Football Playoff rankings at No. 19 on Nov. 9, the first-ever in the CFP era for the Boilermakers.
• The season was capped off with a thrilling 48-45 overtime victory over Tennessee in the TransPerfect Music City Bowl.
• The Boilermakers held four opponents to fewer than 10 points in 2021, the first time it has achieved the feat since 1978, when six opponents were held to single-digit point totals.
 
NEW FACES ON STAFF
• The Boilermakers will have five new assistant coaches on the sidelines in 2022:
• David Elson (Linebackers) - a former head coach at Western Kentucky and a defensive coordinator at several stops, spent the 2021 campaign with Purdue as a defensive quality control coach.
• Garrick McGee (Wide Receivers) - joined the Boilermakers with 26 years of coaching experience, including time as the head coach at UAB, where Jeff Brohm was his offensive coordinator, and several stints as an offensive coordinator; he most recently coached quarterbacks at Florida in 2021.
• Ryan Wallace (Tight Ends) - has spent the past five seasons on Brohm's staff, serving as an offensive and special teams assistant.
• Aston Youboty (Cornerbacks) - was an All-Big Ten cornerback at Ohio State and played five seasons in the NFL before making the transition into coaching; he coached cornerbacks at Youngstown State and was as a quality control coach at Wisconsin.
• Karl Maslowski (Special Teams/Linebackers) - joined Purdue after spending three seasons at Louisville. He was an All-American linebacker at Western Kentucky from 1999-03.
 
SECOND SEASON WITH ENGLISH/HAGEN
• Purdue enters its second season with co-defensive coordinators Ron English and Mark Hagen. The duo, along with fellow co-defensive coordinator Brad Lambert who left for Wake Forest during the offseason, provided some much-needed stability to the defensive side of the ball.
• With Hagen's focus on the defensive line and English handling the defensive backs, Purdue trimmed opponents' passing yards per game down to 208.7 yards, which ranked fifth nationally and second in the Big Ten.
• The Boilermakers also posted their first shutout since 2011 with a 49-0 drubbing of UConn.