Purdue offensive line utilizes bye week to recover

By Greg Doddridge
Staff Writer

Purdue’s offensive line has a bye week ahead to recover from its worst performance this season, which came against Michigan on Saturday.

"We started playing very well up until this game (against Michigan) and I think we kind of let down," said junior center Gene Mruczkowski after the Boilers’ 24-10 loss to Michigan on Saturday. "We faced a little adversity and didn’t play up to our potential on the offensive line."

Quarterback Brandon Hance was sacked seven times against Michigan, including three times on consecutive plays during one stretch late in the fourth quarter.

"We didn’t pass block particularly well," said Purdue coach Joe Tiller. "We didn’t run block particularly well."

The seven sacks against Michigan are equal to the total number of sacks the offensive line gave up against Purdue’s first four opponents this year.

And even more revealing is a comparison of the sacks allowed by this year's offensive line and the offensive lines of the previous four years under Tiller.

Purdue’s offensive line allowed 62 sacks out of 2,147 passing attempts during the previous four seasons for an average of one sack allowed for every 34.6 passing attempts.

This year’s offensive line has already allowed 14 sacks in 170 passing attempts in just five games. That is one sack allowed per every 12.1 passing attempts, which is the worst average under the five years of Tiller and offensive line coach Danny Hope.

Purdue’s offensive line from last year, which had three linemen that are currently playing in the NFL, allowed just one sack for every 52.8 passing attempts.

Matt Light plays for the New England Patriots, Chukky Okobi plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Brandon Gorin plays for the San Diego Chargers.

The offensive line this year consists of junior left tackle Pete Lougheed, senior left guard Sean Rufolo, Mruczkowski, junior right guard Rob Turner and redshirt freshman right tackle Kelly Butler.

The offensive line was also largely responsible for Purdue’s 13 offensive penalties that caused the Boilers a total loss of 131 yards against Michigan. The penalties included four false starts, two illegal formations and two holding calls.

Hope said the penalties were mental errors, but that they can be corrected in practice.

"You can change it," said Butler. "It is frustrating, but you have to go through it, you have to play through it. You have to pick your head up and say, ‘Let’s go fellas, let’s play ball, let’s play ball.’ We lost the game (against Michigan) because of a lot of mental mistakes, but we’re going to prepare for Northwestern and try to pick up where we left off."

But Hope said that a lot of the errors against Michigan were not mental.

"There wasn’t near enough hustle," said Hope. "There wasn’t near enough tempo. There wasn’t near enough technique. The overall execution was poor. That’s disappointing."

Hope said those technical errors are being worked on in practices this week. He would not discuss specifics. And the mental errors (not technical) causing the penalties are also being addressed in practice, such as the errors causing false starts.

"Well, you can come on out here and work on team takeoff, which we are doing at the beginning of practice right now," said Hope. "Working on getting off on the snap count and changing the snap count up in drills are things that you can do to help them focus more on the snap count."

Hope added that missing the snap count is a missed assignment in the eyes of the coaches. He said it’s not a technical error.

Hope said he doesn’t know if he will stick with the same five offensive linemen when Purdue plays Northwestern at 11:10 a.m. on Oct. 27 because the starting spots depend on performance during practice.

"How you perform in practice dictates your playing time," said Hope. "So we’ll practice the next couple of weeks and we’ll see."

Butler said he felt the line stayed together against Michigan’s great defensive front.

"I feel we played hard as a unit," said Butler. "We just made a couple of mistakes, but as a unit, we stayed together and we played hard. We played as hard as we could."

Hope yelled at the linemen this weekend.

"I told them that they needed to try harder," he said.

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Purdue offensive line utilizes bye week to recover

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