Weekly Word: Purdue’s Edey-less Europe trip, offensive line dynamics and more
The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s Weekly Word, we discuss Purdue basketball, offensive lines in the Transfer Era and more.
ON PURDUE NOT HAVING ZACH EDEY IN EUROPE
Time will tell how much Purdue playing overseas without Zach Edey impacts the Boilermakers’ season. It probably won’t at all. What’s the worst that can happen over there without Edey (injuries/Customs detainments aside)? For Purdue to lose a game that doesn’t matter and no one will remember in a week or two?
But there are some potential benefits worth at least talking out here.
For one thing, Purdue needs those around Edey these to grow into something more, to grow up, really. Last season, the Boilermakers were understandably top-heavy and more reliant on one player than turned out to be sustainable.
Now, other people need to be pushed into the fire to balance things out. Anything that empowers the sophomore guards, for example, or Trey Kaufman-Renn or Caleb Furst or the young wings to assert themselves more might be a net positive from an attitudinal standpoint, provided those guys don’t come back to the States thinking that all of a sudden they’re Kobe to Edey’s Shaq and it’s their team now. For one more year, this is still a matter of complementing the Player-of-the-Year.
Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer really ought to be Purdue’s best players in those four exhibition games. But this is also a golden opportunity for Kaufman-Renn and Furst to spread their wings. Any positive momentum they can gain playing without Edey, hey, great, even if they’re not necessarily playing the roles they will play with him.
Other than that, the context of this trip is warped. Kaufman-Renn needs reps playing next to Edey. He won’t get them overseas. Myles Colvin and Camden Heide needs reps playing off Edey. That’ll have to wait ’til November. Whatever Purdue will want to do different with Edey this season, that’s on hold now, at least in terms of games. He has practiced with Purdue this week and will keep doing so until called to stand on guard for thee later this month.
It’s funny how this worked out. This trip was first planned for a few years ago, but — and perhaps you’ve heard about this — there was a pandemic. The next year, half Purdue’s team was hurt. Now, the trip finally happens when this richly experienced and well established team needs it least.
Still, any experience moves the needle forward. It’s up to Purdue to find progress here where the margins for progress are quite narrow.
GIVE THESE MEN A RAISE
You know what sub-population of the college football coaching complex will really be earning their pay in this modern era?
Aside from the recruiting staffers operating vast organizations unto themselves, I mean.
Offensive line coaches.
These are the guys who are gonna be tasked with coaching new players on a fast track every year. Everyone will be recruiting offensive linemen off the transfer wire every year. It’s just such a high-risk position in recruiting, it’s difficult to develop enough of them, and even if you can, depth is so important that there’s no such thing as enough. Injuries take a toll, too, but offenses working at faster and faster tempos put a premium on having a well-stocked two-deep.
There may not be a position in football other than quarterback where continuity matters more, and certainly no position where chemistry is more important. It’s the position where you really want to be old.
Purdue will certainly be one of a thousand, give or take, programs recruiting offensive linemen every year. Hell, it has been for like a decade already, back when the thought of open transfers as there are today were just a pit in the bottom of coaches’ stomachs.
No position will be more over-recruited from this day forward. At no position will it be more true that a player’s best ability is merely avail-ability. No position will see more staffs sign more terrible players than on the offensive line, only to hope for better luck next year.
In the meantime, it will be offensive line coaches who’ll be asked to stitch groups of vagabonds into units, on deadline, no less. Look at Purdue. It added six transfer offensive linemen this year, a group spanning some of the lowest levels of college football all the way up to the SEC and Pac-12.
I am fascinated by the transfer-onboarding part of all this. How much do staffs boil down their playbooks and schemes to make things easily teachable for players who come from different systematic backgrounds? Everything’s new to everyone at Purdue right now, so it’s a bad example, but any school out there, do you cut back on your blocking schemes or run less stuff in hopes of giving your offensive line — and quarterback, mind you, as well as any other pass- or run-blocking contributors — the best chance to function as a group right away? My thought is that all across the board, the Transfer Era will make the college game simpler, out of necessity.
But those offensive line coaches, there won’t be enough hours in the day for those guys come August.
Purdue Flag (Photo: Chad Krockover)
RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK
• I see that the Big Ten media days schedule has Illinois talking Wednesday of next week and Purdue on Thursday. Would have been great to see them on the same day so reporters could talk to Bret Bielema about Ryan Walters, then run right over to Ryan Walters to talk about Bret Bielema. Those there both days can obviously still get both but not as easily. I’m fascinated in that dynamic now that Bielema and Walters are Big Ten West rivals and more juicily, recruiting adversaries.
I don’t know if “juicily” is a word, but it sure as hell should be if you ask me.
• Whether there are minutes there for him, that’s an October matter, but I’m telling you: Brian Waddell has looked excellent in the summer Purdue practices I’ve seen. Newcomers Myles Colvin and Camden Heide are going to be more exciting, but they are going to have to be really advanced to keep the sophomore from snatching a chunk of the minutes on the wing.
• Definitely running out of thoughts.
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