A Spartan Effort for Brees and Daniels

Purdue had the right combination to hand Michigan State its first loss of the season.

Chris Daniels was on the receiving end of the combination, setting Big Ten records for receptions and receiving yardage, as No. 20 Purdue upset No. 5 Michigan State, 52-28, Saturday.

Daniels had 21 catches for 301 yards and three touchdowns. That helped Drew Brees finish with a season-high 509 yards and five touchdowns.

“Brees and Daniels both played outstanding,” Michigan State Coach Nick Saban said. “This game is a very humbling game. We got slammed. I wasn’t pleased with the way we played at all. We didn’t show enough consistency on offense in terms of moving the football.”

Brees threw all five of his touchdown passes in the first half when the Boilermakers, 5-2 overall and 2-2 in the Big Ten, opened a 35-14 lead.

“In the beginning of the game, we didn’t play very well on defense,” Saban said. “Then we settled down a little bit, but we’d already dug a pretty good hole for ourselves.”

Brees completed 23 of 33 passes for 344 yards in the first half. Daniels had 12 catches in the first half for 200 yards, with touchdown receptions of 51, 10 and four yards. Brees finished 40 for 57, but his 509 yards is not his career high. He had 522 against Wisconsin last season.

“Drew does a great job of executing and they’ve got a lot of good receivers. We didn’t do what we had to do in coverage today to take it away from them,” Saban said.

Daniels, who went into the game leading the Big Ten with 57 receptions, topped the Big Ten record for receiving yards of 285, set by Thomas Lewis of Indiana in 1993.

His 21 catches breaks the conference record of 18, set by Purdue’s Randall Lane, who caught one of Brees’ touchdown passes Saturday.

“He made some great catches and we didn’t cover him very well at times,” Saban said of Daniels. “He’s a very good receiver, he’s a go-to guy for them and he made some outstanding catches.”

“I was unaware of the records until after the game,” Daniels said. “I’m in a lot of pain right now, but it feels good.”

Michigan State (6-1, 3-1) had six turnovers and gave up five sacks for 49 yards.

“It was our best game of the season,” said Purdue Coach Joe Tiller, whose teams are 15-1 at Ross-Ade Stadium. “It was hard to be better that we were in the first half.”

Brees increased his career totals to 571 completions, 6,537 yards and 55 touchdowns after only 27 games and 20 starts.

“This is probably the biggest win of my career because people were saying we would lose four straight,” he said. “They just used a lot of man coverage, sometimes they were press, sometimes they were soft.

“It just seemed everything kind of worked out. The line did a great job of picking stuff up.”

Michigan State, which came into the game allowing an average of 36.7 rushing yards a game, surrendered 35 in the first half and 59 for the game.

Michigan State netted only five yards rushing in the first half and 44 in the game. Bill Burke was sacked four times in the first half for minus-34 yards.

The Boilermakers, aided by two turnovers, pulled away with three touchdowns in about six minutes.

Trailing, 6-0, after Paul Edinger’s extra-point kick hit the goal post, the Boilermakers went 69 yards in five plays to score on a 51-yard pass to Daniels, who got behind cornerback Amp Campbell and took the pass in stride. Travis Dorsch kicked the first of five extra points to put Purdue ahead for good with 8:40 remaining in the first quarter.

On Michigan State’s first play following the kickoff, Plaxico Burress fumbled when hit by Mike Hawthorne, and Mike Rose recovered for the Boilermakers at the Spartan 27. From there, Vinny Sutherland, who threw an incomplete pass on first down, caught a 27-yard touchdown pass from Brees.

Purdue’s final touchdown came on a 12-yard fumble return by David Nugent.