Purdue routs Indiana State 44-19 in season opener
Ryan Browne threw for 317 yards and 3 touchdowns and Don Saunders returned a pick for a score, but 9 penalties and an unresolved backup quarterback job kept the opener from being clean.
Browne throws for 317 and 3 TDs, but the flags nearly stole the show
Purdue opened the season the way Barry Odom wanted the scoreboard to read and not the way he wanted the tape to look. Ryan Browne threw for 317 yards and 3 touchdowns on 23-of-29 passing, and Purdue turned a 16-6 halftime lead into a 44-19 rout of Indiana State with 28 unanswered points across the third and fourth quarters. It came with the kind of self-inflicted mess that keeps a coach up at night: Purdue drew 9 penalties, and a 63-yard touchdown and a 72-yard kickoff return both got wiped out by holding calls, per Yahoo Sports. Odom didn't hide his frustration postgame, going after the flags and the slow start rather than the final margin, per Hammer and Rails' recap of his press conference.
Indiana State44-19The signature moment belonged to Don Saunders, the Utah transfer who spent fall camp as a name buried on the depth chart and left his Purdue debut as the guy everyone was talking about. With Indiana State backup Brady Allen in for the fourth quarter, Saunders picked off Allen's second pass attempt of the season and returned it 35 yards for a touchdown to make it 44-6.
Don. Saunders. Putting his skills on display right away.
BoilerFootball's own account summed it up simply: 'Don. Saunders. Putting his skills on display right away.' It's one game against an FCS opponent, but a defense that scored twice — the pick-six plus a takedown from Rodney Lora and Trey Smith — gives Purdue something to build on heading into a Big Ten schedule that beat it up all last November.
Starting strong 💪
Browne played wire-to-wire, so the backup job still waits its turn
Purdue still hasn't answered the question that dogged all of fall camp: who plays quarterback if Ryan Browne goes down. Sophomore Evans Chuba, a Washington State transfer without a single college snap to his name, and true freshman Corin Berry, ranked the No. 52 quarterback in his signing class, spent camp in a genuine fight for the QB2 job, and Odom went into the opener still unwilling to name a winner.
The opener did nothing to settle it. Browne started and simply never left long enough to force the issue — BoilerFootball had him at 23-of-29 for 316 yards and 3 touchdowns through three quarters, numbers that barely moved by the final whistle. A stat line that identical from the fourth quarter is usually a sign nobody behind him saw meaningful work, which means Chuba, Berry and everyone else in that room are still waiting for real game snaps to make the case Odom says nobody has made yet.
First win under McClelland snaps the skid Indiana left behind
Purdue's last game before Friday was a 56-3 blowout loss at Indiana that closed out a five-game losing streak and a 2-10 season. Friday's 44-19 win didn't just open 2026 — it snapped the run of futility that new athletic director Tommy McClelland inherited when he was hired out of Rice this August, and BoilerFootball made sure to note it: 'First win with Director of Athletics @tmcclelland ‼️'
It's a tidy bookend to the noise McClelland made on arrival, telling recruits and current players, 'We are here to win championships. If you don't want to win championships, go to Indiana,' per CFBKings. Odom has stuck to the gentler version of that message all offseason, but one win over a shaky Indiana State team is a long way from erasing the 10-game skid Purdue carried into this opener — the real test of that starts with Wake Forest next week, long before the rematch Brett McMurphy already circled for November 28 in Bloomington.
Wake Forest already found out success can feel like an illusion
Purdue's Week 2 opponent needed just one half to look like the better team in its own opener. Wake Forest beat Akron 38-16 on September 3, with transfer quarterback Gio Lopez throwing for 313 yards and all 3 of his touchdowns before the break, including a 72-yard strike to Louisville transfer Antonio Meeks and a 78-yard catch-and-run from Carlos Hernandez. Coach Jake Dickert, coming off a 9-4 debut season at Wake Forest, wasn't satisfied even with the margin: 'Success can be an illusion,' he said afterward, adding that his team 'was sloppy in a lot of phases of this game,' per Last Word on College Football.
The two teams meet on September 12 vs. Wake Forest at Ross-Ade Stadium, and the line has treated it as the toss-up it looks like on paper: it opened with Wake Forest favored by 3.5 and the total set at a low 49.5. Purdue is the underdog at home, and it will need to clean up the same self-inflicted-penalty problem that nearly cost it style points against an FCS team — Dickert's Demon Deacons won't get flagged out of nearly as many big plays.