The first award for this young man.
The Big Ten announced their weekly awards for the prior week today and surprise surprise, Purdue gets their name called! The Shaun Alexander Freshman of the Week award was well earned by Ryan Browne who started the game this week against Illinois and led a fourth quarter drive that put Purdue in the lead with :46 seconds left.
415 yards in his first career start.
Second Purdue QB since 1970 to pass for 250+ yards and rush for 100+ yards in a single game.@ryanbrownexv is the Shaun Alexander Freshman Player of the Week! pic.twitter.com/7NbJRDMqr5
— Purdue Football (@BoilerFootball) October 15, 2024
As the tweet notes, Browne accumulated 415 yards in this game. Browne threw for 297 yards and three touchdowns. In addition to these passing yards, he contributed 118 rushing yards. He was the leading rusher for the Boilermakers and actually the leading rusher for either team.
Brown had a rough first half as he went into the locker room with just 9 first half passing yards and his team down 24-3. Then, he and the offense came alive in the second half. Purdue scored 40 points in the second half including the aforementioned go ahead touchdown with less than a minute left in the game. Of course, it didn’t end up being the winning score as Purdue lost it in overtime, but that wasn’t the fault of Browne.
The depth chart for Friday’s game against Oregon was just released and Browne was atop the depth chart. Hudson Card is still listed with him, but with a game like this it seems unlikely that Walters will be able to keep Browne off the field for this one. Congrats to Brown on what we hope will be just the first of many awards.