Purdue had Wake Forest beat and let it slip away in a 38-36 double overtime loss on Saturday at Ross-Ade Stadium. Now the Boilermakers fly west for an 11 p.m. ET kickoff against UCLA to open Big Ten play.
For a few seconds on Saturday afternoon, Purdue had won. Fireworks went off above the Ross-Ade Stadium video board, which flashed a victory message after the defense appeared to stop Wake Forest on fourth-and-15 in the second overtime. Then the play went to review. Carlos Hernandez was ruled to have reached the marker by inches, giving the Demon Deacons a fresh set of downs at the 2-yard line. Gio Lopez scored on a quarterback draw one play later, ran it in again for the two-point conversion, and Wake Forest left West Lafayette with a 38-36 double overtime win.
The loss drops Purdue to 1-1 and extends two streaks the program badly wants to end. It was the Boilermakers’ third straight overtime defeat, and Purdue still hasn’t beaten a Power Four opponent since closing out the 2023 season with a win against Indiana.
“You lose a heartbreaker and a close one when you did all the work you did for it,” Barry Odom said. “The team is gutted a bit, but we will bounce back."
How It Slipped Away
Regulation ended 23-23 on a 20-yard Jacobo Echeverria Lozano field goal as time expired, but the drive that set it up is one the staff would like back. Purdue had first-and-goal from the 8 with 1:03 left and three timeouts. It ran twice, Ryan Browne scrambled on third down, and the Boilermakers settled for the tie.
“If I had to go back and do it one more time, I’d have taken one more shot to the end zone,” offensive coordinator Josh Henson said Monday.
Wake Forest needed two plays to score in the first overtime. Purdue’s answer came on fourth-and-goal from the 9, when Browne stood in against pressure and hit a striding De’Nylon Morrissette to tie it at 30. Fame Ijeboi powered in on the second overtime possession to make it 36-30, but the two-point try, a Browne throw to Xavier Townsend in the flat, came up short of the goal line.
That left Wake Forest needing a touchdown and a two-point conversion to win. Purdue blitzed and stopped the Deacons on three straight snaps, then sat back in zone on fourth-and-15 and gave up the conversion.
“That one’s a hard pill to swallow,” linebacker Charles Correa said. “We knew the situation, and we knew where the sticks were, and that was our goal to just keep them in front of that. And the game was over.”
“We can’t be backing up in certain situations and allow free access to happen at that point in time,” defensive coordinator Kevin Kane said. “I got to do a better job of getting our guys lined up to play that.”
Ryan Browne and Fame Ijeboi Carry the Offense
For all the frustration, Purdue’s two best players had big days. Ijeboi ran 27 times for 114 yards and three touchdowns, and added six catches for 42 yards. He has four touchdowns in two games and looks like the kind of tackle-breaking running back that Purdue hasn’t had in years.
“Every single play, whether it’s pass protection, carrying out his fake out of the backfield, catching the ball, running a route, or carrying the ball, he’s got the heart of a champion,” Odom said. “And I’m so glad he’s here.”
Browne completed 32 of 42 passes for 329 yards and a touchdown, his second straight 300-yard game, and still hasn’t thrown an interception after tossing 10 a season ago. He leads the Big Ten in passing yards at 323 yards per game. Asaad Waseem and Townsend joined Ijeboi with six receptions apiece, and Chauncey Magwood led the team with 77 receiving yards.
Red Zone Stalls and a Familiar Defensive Problem
Purdue outgained Wake Forest 455 to 411, ran 14 more plays and didn’t turn the ball over. It lost anyway because the same two issues from the season opener against Indiana State showed up again.
The first is finishing drives. After Ijeboi’s 14-yard touchdown on the opening possession, Purdue reached the Wake Forest 31-yard line or better on three of its next four drives and came away with one field goal. Lozano went 3-for-4, missing from 49, but a team that moves the ball this well shouldn’t be leaning on its freshman kicker this often. Purdue didn’t see the end zone again until Ijeboi’s seven-yard score with over four minutes left in regulation.
The second is stopping a mobile quarterback, a problem that dogged Kane’s defenses during his first stint as coordinator in 2023 and 2024. Lopez led Wake Forest with 59 rushing yards and two touchdowns on designed runs and added 225 yards through the air at 14.2 yards per completion. Purdue didn’t record a sack until the fourth quarter, finished with two, and didn’t force a turnover.
There was some good mixed in throughout the game, though. The defense didn’t surrender any of the 70-yard bombs Wake Forest hit against Akron and held the Demon Deacons to field goals when Wake Forest could have run away with the game. Correa had a team-high 12 tackles and Jeremy Lewis had 1.5 sacks.
Looking Ahead: Purdue Opens Big Ten Play at UCLA
There’s no time to sit with this one. Purdue (1-1) opens Big Ten play Saturday at UCLA (2-0), with kickoff at 11 p.m. ET on Big Ten Network. It’s the latest kickoff for a Purdue game since a 2006 trip to Hawaii, and the Boilermakers’ last two trips to the Pacific time zone ended 38-21 at Oregon State and 49-13 at Washington.
The Bruins lead the all-time series 3-0-2, but the teams haven’t met since 1980. It’s also Purdue’s first trip to the Rose Bowl since the Granddaddy of Them All on Jan. 1, 2001, when Drew Brees and the Boilermakers fell to Washington 34-24. UCLA is 2-0 under first-year head coach Bob Chesney, who came over from James Madison, with wins at Cal and over San Diego State. The Bruins opened as 15.5-point favorites.
Odom said the team will do its heavy preparation in West Lafayette before flying out Friday afternoon and locking in over the final 48 hours.
What to Watch in Pasadena
The biggest question is how Purdue responds. Last year, a gut-punch loss at Minnesota was followed by a 19-0 no-show at Northwestern, but a late fumble against Rutgers was answered with a real effort at Michigan. Which version shows up Saturday night will say a lot about year two under Odom, especially with a top-five Notre Dame team coming to Ross-Ade the following week.
Turnovers are the other thing to keep an eye on. The offense hasn’t given the ball away in two games, and that has to continue. The defense has one takeaway all season, Don Saunders’ pick-six against Indiana State, and it needs to create more against a UCLA offense that has put up 45 and 28 points in its first two games.
Purdue hasn’t won a Big Ten game in 18 tries and hasn’t won in California since the thrilling 2017 Foster Farms Bowl against Arizona. A win Saturday night ends both of those streaks and changes the tone of the season. A loss, with Notre Dame up next, puts a 1-3 start squarely on the table.
“It’s a long season. We’re not going to let one game define us,” Ijeboi said. “We’re going to learn from this and be better.”
Purdue let one get away last Saturday. This Saturday night is the first chance to get one back.
