Weekly Word: Purdue’s next man up, the NFL Draft and more

The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert . In today’s edition, we discuss Purdue’s next breakout player, quarterbacks, college basketball topics and more.

BREAKOUT CANDIDATE 1

So, lately, every year Purdue has had a player absolutely blow up between one season and the next. Two seasons ago, Zach Edey; last year, Braden Smith.

Tough acts to follow, for sure, and I am in no way suggesting Purdue will have another All-American pop up suddenly this off-season. But I also wouldn’t rule it out.

Who? Well, that’s an interesting question, because Year 1-to-2 improvement from Myles Colvin and Camden Heide will make them interesting, as will Fletcher Loyer as Purdue has to scheme to get him opportunities every single game.

But the obvious choice here is Trey Kaufman-Renn, who already kinda blew up last summer but now gets more of a chance to apply it.

Post-Touch Guy at Purdue has become one of the plum jobs in all of college basketball, kind of like being Lincoln Riley’s quarterback these days. At least in terms of college productivity.

Kaufman-Renn is now that guy, sure to double if not triple his offensive touches, play enough for his rebounding to really show up even more, but also to grow through experience and the mistakes that may come with responsibility. He’ll have a great point guard to work with.

One of the reasons Purdue’s got this lineage of great bigs going is because it throws them out there, gives them the ball and forces them to improve through responsibility. Kaufman-Renn isn’t a kid anymore, but this will be his first time at Purdue being more of a centerpiece than just a piece. It’ll put an onus on his passing and decision-making unlike any test he’s gotten in college.

The great news for Purdue is that Kaufman-Renn is wired for this. He’s as intelligent and complete a person as I’ve been around in a college player, but also manic in his work ethic, the common denominator with some of these incredible players Purdue has had before. Kaufman-Renn was good this season, but capable of more, and he clearly knows it and will carry that knowledge with him all summer as his big opportunity — postponed a year ago by Edey’s return — awaits.

He’s in for big things.

ON QUARTERBACKS AND THE NFL DRAFT

It was just four NFL Drafts ago that Trevor Lawrence was picked first overall, Zach Wilson second, Trey Lance third, Justin Fields 11th and Mac Jones 15th.

Today, Lawrence — the no-brainer top overall pick that year — is very good, but hardly the transformational talent the Jacksonville Jaguars hoped for when they drafted him out of Clemson. Those other four guys have all already been traded away for, basically, bags of Doritos.

Four of the five — one-third of the first half of that first round — can already be called busts, essentially wastes of the picks franchises are supposed to build winning teams with. It really makes you wonder whether these people actually have any idea what they’re doing.

But it’s hard with quarterbacks, hard to evaluate them, I guess. Maybe we all ought to be smarter about how we look at quarterbacks. It’s so much more than laser-rocket arms, statue-esque dimensions and all that. It’s about leading, moxie, processing information, fit and priorities.

Sadly, I’m a Jets fan. I knew Zach Wilson was cooked as soon as the story came out about his trysts with various, um, mature women. I knew Mark Sanchez was cooked as soon as he started getting linked to less, um, mature women. I knew Sam Darnold was cooked when he got mono, presumably from some variation of that sort of behavior. (The Jets instead should have focused on bastions of maturity and professionalism like Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers.)

Anyway, enough complaining about the Jets. My point is, quarterbacks need to be focused and mature as can be, some of the many intangibles that can be hard to put a finger on. They’re responsible for so much. Hopefully you get what I’m saying here. It’s the focused, hyper-driven guys who are more likely to work out.

How serious is a player about football? How much does winning matter to them? To what extent are they willing to put their teammates above themselves? Are they adaptable to new situations? Did people want to play not just with them, but for them?

NFL people — and by extension the college coaches recruiting high school and portal QBs — have to get this part of it right before worrying about anything else. It shouldn’t be that hard, but obviously it is.

And NFL people, just like college coaches looking for that final piece for a championship team, probably ought to chill on the urge to chase the guy at every opportunity, because history has shown us that when you do that you’re, at best, flipping coins, at worst, buying scratch-offs at the gas station.

The reason it’s these same teams with these top picks every year is because when you’re bad, then you draft that “franchise” guy onto a bad team, you are still bad, and you have set your man up to either fail or get hurt. They should all “redshirt” like Patrick Mahomes did, but we all know when money and jobs are on the line, things are guided by those factors.

But building the team first, then getting the quarterback, that sounds like a hell of a way to go to me. Those teams that blew those picks in 2021, many of them passed on Ja’Marr Chase, Micah Parsons, Penei Sewell and Pat Surtain, all Pro Bowl picks already at critical positions. Instead of over-drafting quarterbacks every damn year, maybe put them on an even plane with everyone else and see what happens when there’s a defense, an offensive line and playmakers in place on Day 1.

The list of modern-era QBs who changed teams late in their careers with enough left in their tanks to help someone else win includes Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers (LOL) and Matt Stafford, all Hall-of-Famers. There is a robust secondary market on quarterbacks, you know, same as in college.

The list of quarterback transfers who’ve appeared in the College Football Playoff: Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Michael Penix, Fields, Quinn Ewers, etc.

Whether it’s college or NFL, you have to bring these guys into strong situations instead of just thinking they automatically strengthen that situation by themselves. At least at the NFL level, these are 50/50 propositions at best, the Whammy in “Press Your Luck” if you’re wrong.

This weekend, all the top picks will again be quarterbacks, some of them clear reaches in a draft full of potentially great offensive tackles.

Maybe one of those quarterbacks hits. Watch.

Purdue Flag (Chad Krockover)

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• Here’s hoping for a great year for Mason Gillis at Duke, hopefully in a good basketball situation. Gillis would have been a great final piece for an already great team. Duke lost so many players, though, you just hope he’s not gonna just be asked to be Crash Davis to Cooper Flagg‘s Nuke Laloosh. If Duke gets the same consummate competitor Purdue’s had for years now, he’ll be great for those young players, but Gillis’ value really comes out in structure and in playing off other accomplished players. That’s now up to Jon Scheyer — the jury still being out on him — to figure out, as he owes it to Gillis to put him in the best positions to succeed.

But if there’s ever a player who fits Duke, 1990s/early 2000s Duke especially, it’s Gillis.

As I wrote last week, these extra years (which can’t end soon enough) are a chance for these players to finish something at one school, then start something elsewhere, as Lance Jones just did at Purdue.

Seems to me like Duke needs a spark and another cultural pillar. Hard to imagine a better add in that sense.

• Quote of the Year Candidate 1: “My bad I was buggin.’”
— Former USC wide receiver Kyle Ford on transferring back to the Trojans after a year at UCLA.

One of the oddest and funniest things about all this right now is when players leave a school, then transfer back. I can think of at least three such stories this off-season.

• Cobbling together this look at the Big Ten’s 2024 class of new coaches brought to mind the question of whether these differing approaches to program-building these days ought to be a binary decision: High school or transfers, one or the other, all in either way.

There’s no right way or wrong way — maybe time yields enough data eventually, but it’s al still so new — but very different ways, and they don’t jibe. Tom Izzo just made public comments about not wanting to build through the portal because of course he did. Everything these coaches say, they are speaking to high school recruits. As has long been the case, it doesn’t matter what coaches say in recruiting; it matters what they do.

Loading up on transfers every year is going to poison your high school recruiting and chase away the freshmen you do get; going the high school rout opens you up to occasionally being — gasp — young. Young is about as appealing these days as a bad case of Montezuma’s revenge.

There’s risk and reward both ways, but playing both sides of the fence, that might be the least sustainable option long-term.

• More a media wonk topic than anything, but congratulations to the agent community for finally realizing after decades of gifting information to national reporters that mandating attribution is the easiest free advertising ever. Seriously, go look at all this breaking news now. “ESPN sources” has very quickly become “his agent, (agent name), of (agency name), tells ESPN.” Not just ESPN; it’s all of ’em. The quid-pro-quo between agents and scoop-bots has always been a thing, but who ever would have thought the self-promotion game would take agents this long to figure out?

• Quote of the Year Candidate 2: “I just met with the team. There is no team.”
— John Calipari at his introductory press conference at Arkansas.

That’s college basketball in 2024. Take a new job and start from absolute scratch, then do it again the following year after all the one-year stop-gaps leave.

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