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Iowa football look ahead: Buck at Purdue will stop with Jeff Brohm
Marc Morehouse
Aug. 28, 2017 1:00 pm
Minnesota's hiring of head coach P.J. Fleck sucked all of the oxygen out of the offseason coaching merry-go-round in the Big Ten West.
Fleck is that way. Minnesota needs him to be that way.
Meanwhile over in West Lafayette, Ind., new Purdue head coach Jeff Brohm has arrived on campus. At the very least, he's not going to stand for wasting time. This came to a head a few days into camp, when Brohm lit into the team for on-field fights that disrupted practice.
According to the Lafayette Courier & Journal, Brohm stopped practice and fired off a 30-second profanity-laced tirade directed at the behavior of the players.
The paper wrote, 'Words of these nature haven't been spoken at the Bimel Practice Complex in years, if ever.'
Brohm had the entire team run sprints and then he camped between the offensive and defensive lines. 'When the play is over, it's over,' he shouted.
'There's a difference between playing confident and swagger and doing things that are going to get you penalties and thrown out of the game,' Brohm said. 'It's got to be between the whistles. Anything that is going to hurt the team, which is being thrown out of the game, we can't have.'
This is a glimpse of a cultural foundation being placed. In case you don't recognize important moments when they happen in culture building, Purdue is a program that hasn't had a winning season since 7-6 in 2011.
Purdue doesn't have time for belly bucking in practice. Truthfully, it never has. Brohm gets this. Will it win games in year 1? No. You could, however, argue that culture is more important than wins in year 1 at Purdue.
Enter the QB
: While we're on culture, let's check quarterback David Blough. He led the Big Ten with 279.3 passing yards per game last season. He's always been a nice player, throwing everything on the field for a program that is on its third head coach since 2012.
Blough has numbers. We learned at the Big Ten kickoff luncheon that Blough also has a message.
Blough was chosen to speak on behalf of the 42 student-athletes representing the 14 conference schools at the annual luncheon in Chicago.
Blough blew away everyone.
'I wanted to go up there and talk about how football teaches life and what it's taught me and how I get through it, in some things,' Blough said. 'I didn't want to be trite, come across as pressing what I believe because that's not what diversity is. ... I wanted to talk a lot about diversity. That's how football is special to me. My best friend is from Nigeria. My closest friends are big guys, little guys, fast guys, it doesn't matter. Then I realized football encompasses so much more than that, the perspective and responsibility and just the life lessons, too. It was more than just diversity, so I had to pivot in that way.'
Purdue on defense
: Purdue defensive coordinator Nick Holt will have the Boilermakers operate from a base 4-3. It will often have four linebackers on the field, with that fourth being an end/linebacker hybrid, standing up to cause maximum disruption in a quarterback's site lines.
'What we try to do is be multiple up front and not be a stationary set that an offense can identify and react to,' said Brohm, a former quarterback. 'We're getting better every year at that.'
Purdue's defense will be driven by the linebackers. Ja'Whaun Bentley is a three-year starter. Markus Bailey led in tackles and interceptions as a redshirt freshman last season. Danny Ezechukwu started all 12 games in 2015. T.J. McCollum was an All-Conference USA performer before coming to Purdue as a graduate transfer.
Hawkeyes Look Ahead
Nov. 18 vs. Purdue (Kinnick Stadium)
Time and TV: TBA
Week before: at Wisconsin
Week after: at Nebraska (Memorial Stadium) 3 p.m. FS1
On the horizon: Bowl prep
Purdue Boilermakers
Coach: Jeff Brohm (0-0, first season at Purdue)
2016 record: 3-9, 1-8 in the Big Ten West Division (7th)
Scoring offense: 24.6 points per game (11th in B1G, 101st nationally)
Total offense: 391.1 yards per game (7th B1G, 80th nationally)
Scoring defense: 38.3 points allowed per game (14th B1G, T-117th nationally)
Total defense: 445.8 yards allowed per game (13th B1G, 91st nationally)
Series: Purdue leads, 46-38-3
Last meeting: After having disposed of Purdue with a massive attack in the first half and then having to redispose Purdue after allowing the Boilermakers to make it kind of a game in the bleech of fourth-quarter garbage time and then having to re-re-dispose of Purdue with Desmond King's 41-yard interception return for a TD late in the game, the Hawkeyes were finally able to swarm up and out of Ross-Ade Stadium.
Garbage time made Iowa's school-record ninth straight road victory kind of drag out to the point where everyone was sort of looking at their watch. Purdue cranked out 82 plays.
l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com
The Purdue Boilermakers take the field at Ross-Ade Stadium before their 2016 game against Iowa. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)