Special thanks to Drew Schneider of Hammer and Rails for joining me to discuss Purdue’s roster on this week’s podcast:
After last offseason’s tumult with four schools joining the league and four teams with coaching and roster overhauls, this offseason has been relatively quiet … with one exception. That’s been Purdue, as the Boilermakers fired former head coach Ryan Walters and his entire staff, and new head coach Odom has almost completely turned over the roster (though honorable mention to Maryland,
where they’ve rearranged almost everything but the head coach this year).
Since the NCAA eliminated the initial counter cap for the 2023 offseason, there have been five Power conference programs that have hit the 40/40 churn mark for non-specialist, scholarship players transferring out and a similar number transferring in who weren’t preps the year before: Arizona State and Colorado in 2023, Indiana in 2024, and Oklahoma State and Purdue in 2025. In a strange turn of fate I’ll have written in depth about each one, and I’ve learned a few lessons about sound roster construction as well as pitfalls in these massive roster swaps.
As Drew and I discussed on the podcast, Odom looks like he’s done a pretty good job at the major checkboxes – he’s brought over a core of reliable players and successful assistants from his previous school, and filled out the roster in a positionally balanced manner with an abundance of historically productive players with what appears to be open competitions and layered depth options rather than making bets on a small number of “can’t miss” guys with no alternatives if there’s a problem with the favorite.
There’ll probably be a bottleneck at the offensive line since unlike the program on the other side of I-70 last year the Boilermakers’ room was almost totally wiped out, and the o-line is the most resistant to instant turnaround through the portal. Drew and I also detected several pieces of evidence throughout the podcast that Odom has deliberately settled in for a longer-term build and has not pulled out all the stops to win right away at any cost. And we both thought the schedule-makers did Purdue no favors in 2025, with almost all of their marginal games on the road instead of at home, so adding those factors up it’s unlikely that this team makes the playoffs in the first year, but otherwise most of the signs are fairly encouraging for the future.
The most interesting point of comparison is Odom’s history as UNLV’s head coach over the last two seasons. He’d taken over in Las Vegas and won 9 then 11 games, the first success of any kind for the Rebels in 40 years as they’d had a miserable 135-293 record (31.5%) since Harvey Hyde was fired in the 1980s due to some campus politics (and also Hyde was probably cheating). Odom had a long history at his alma mater Missouri, rejoining almost immediately after his playing days and working his way up over 13 years under Gary Pinkel from GA to DC, then taking over as head coach for four years during a contentious time when Pinkel resigned amid a cancer diagnosis, campus racial protests, and harsh NCAA sanctions. That period of time, the recovery then leveling out of Mizzou football, his departure and time as Arkansas’ DC, and how exactly Odom relates to his time away from Columbia is fascinating and I think could fill a book; for our purposes today his immediate time at UNLV will suffice because it captures his pattern for roster (re-)construction and the coaching rolodex he built at Mizzou and Arkansas.
On the podcast, Drew pointed out that Odom has successfully managed a massive roster overhaul, just like the one he’s engaged in at Purdue, previously at UNLV. I would say that’s true but it needs some unpacking, because while there are several clear observable parallels in the process so far, there are also some important differences in pace and payoff. Odom did very rapidly reverse the three-year talent slide at UNLV since Marcus Arroyo took over from Tony Sanchez, however this didn’t really happen until his second cycle … the first cycle Odom was in Las Vegas, there was actually a dip in overall team talent. Here are the 24/7 team talent composite rankings:
While we’ve seen something similar in terms of the talent ratings at Purdue — a massive fall in Walters’ tenure between a .8690 roster average in 2023 to .8606 in 2024 according to my database, probably contributing to his firing, then even with the massive turnover for Odom’s first cycle the net dip has been a small one, down to .8578 for 2025 — it’s going at a significantly accelerated tempo. At UNLV there were ultimately 40 transfers out and 34 transfers in, but these were broken up in two stages: 19 out & 13 in for 2023, then 21 out & 22 in for 2024, accompanied by full prep recruiting classes of 20 then 24 freshmen. At Purdue he’s effectively smashed two UNLV cycles’ worth of transfers into a single cycle for 2025 – 48 out & 48 in just this offseason.
Odom has also brought in substantially fewer preps to Purdue in his first cycle with the Boilermakers than he did with the Rebels, and there’s more to unpack there. The staff got 14 preps to sign originally, but it seems that the final count will be down to 10, as one has left the team after enrolling and three more are not listed on the roster after Fall camp has started and Drew told me it was unlikely that they’re going to join.
But as we repeatedly came across and noted on the podcast, Odom has used the portal in this cycle for recruiting by other means – about a quarter of the portal additions are redshirt freshmen plus a couple of redshirt sophomores who don’t appear to be “play right away” guys but rather are going into the developmental pipeline. This seems to be about staggering the restocking of the roster for class balance so they don’t all depart at the same time, as would be the case if all the developmental takes were preps. The number of transfers who look like they’re going into the mix for serious Fall camp competition for rotational playing time is closer to 36 than 48, and those three dozen themselves are well balanced across units with guys on their final season vs guys with a couple years of eligibility remaining.
The other significant factor is just how much of his staff is built out from his connections at Missouri and Arkansas, and then at UNLV how many of those coaches brought players with them for bounce-back years. This pattern has repeated in the 2025 cycle at Purdue – virtually all of the coaching staff have worked with Odom before, and more than half of the portal additions with prior college experience have played for one of these coaches at a previous school. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that familiarity is at a premium here – and it’s worked.
What this likely adds up to is that Odom seems to both Drew and I to have settled in for the long haul – not a year or two and then grab the next rung on the ladder like he did at UNLV, or even the four-year hitch in what’s become typical to modern ball, but perhaps a decade or more. The roster management moves seem to be concomitant with that – a smart, stable foundation, not neglecting the short term but in no particular rush either.
Offense
At UNLV, Odom had employed the schematically fascinating Go-Go offense with coordinator Brennan Marion, but has gone with OC Henson for Purdue (I first started charting Marion when he was an FCS coordinator from 2017-19 and for the better part of a decade have been gathering tape and notes for a film study article that fate keeps denying me the excuse to write; he’s now the head coach at Sacramento State with apparently no relevant games on the Hornets’ schedule so I’ll miss them again). Henson was the OL coach and then OC at Mizzou during the time when Odom was DC, then Henson left to take a series of Power conference OL coaching jobs starting in 2016 when Pinkel retired and Odom became head coach in Columbia (Henson was titularly the OC as well at his last job, USC, but as is widely understood head coach Lincoln Riley is actually the playcaller there).
Using some clues from the rest of the roster which I’ll detail below in this article, Drew told me that he expects the philosophy to be relying on the defense first and using the offense mostly for ball control, leaning heavily into the run game although probably not for explosive plays, and lots of quick short passing with wide receiver screens and satellite motions. That is to say, needle the opponent to death in a low-scoring game. While there are some connections with other, more explosive offenses in their pasts, the way the roster is currently built along with the critical limiting factor of offensive line cohesiveness looks like the Fall of 2025 is going to be short stuff, although there’s a possibility for pivoting to other things in the future as the staff’s track record demonstrates.
The starting quarterback for the last couple seasons, Hudson Card, has graduated, and a freshman who was redshirting, Marcus Davila, has transferred to Nebraska. Card’s backup, #15 QB Browne, took over as starter for a stretch, and it was an interesting time to chart – it coincided with their annual game against Walters’ former team, Illinois, which is still running his defense and so Purdue in 2023 and 2024 posted their highest score of each year against them since he knows how to crack his own scheme (Walters, a DC by trade, even took over offensive playcalling in 2024 for it). But I think orthogonal to this factor is that Browne’s athleticism gave them access to read-option plays that my charting project has shown very few Midwestern Big Ten teams know how to defend, and I think even without the Walters effect Browne may have outperformed Card ceteris paribus.But the same charting data indicate non-Midwestern teams are wise to the trick, so in the following week when Browne continued as starter even as Card was healthy again, it didn’t go so hot.
All of this is to say, the charting data I have on Browne are from extreme ends of the contextual spectrum and I don’t think I have good eyes on him from the center of the bell curve. Drew said that he’s always liked Browne from his prep days and I have to say my gut impression from watching tape is favorable too, so I was glad to see Browne transferring back to Purdue after he initially left for North Carolina. I also agreed with Drew, however, that Browne likely has a genuine fight on his hands with Arkansas transfer #3 QB Singleton, who only played in a few games last year but I happen to have charted almost all of his meaningful play on other projects – his passer rating was through the roof at 194.2 and he showed a ton of athleticism (I thought Arkansas was making a big mistake in not playing Singleton more often, having also charted the Boise State transfer QB whom they were starting). Ultimately Drew’s conclusion was that Purdue will operate a two-QB system and use both extensively in the run game to take pressure off the line, and keep each other from taking too many hits.
Other quarterbacks in the room include #18 QB Meredith, a previous transfer from Arizona State I’ve never seen in meaningful time in three seasons and is probably the emergency guy, #1 QB Chuba who redshirted at Wazzu last year, and low 3-star prep recruit #7 QB G. Odom (son of the head coach, who managed to secure the commitment).
The lead back for the past three seasons has been #45 RB Mockobee. He returns for 2025, which is great news for Purdue, but over the course of charting this team for the last several seasons I wouldn’t have necessarily thought so until last year.
The recent history of the position is that the Boilermakers had multiple great backs (and a multiposition stud, Rondale Moore) as recently as 2018, but from 2019-21 they had no backs breaking the FBS median for per-carry performance in any metric. In 2022-23 they had, on a per-carry basis, the most effective running back in the Big Ten by a wide margin on a per-carry basis in multiple metrics including explosive rush rate (which eludes virtually all Midwestern backs) in future NFL stud Tyrone Tracy who’d transferred in from Iowa, but couldn’t figure out how to use him and instead gave the lion’s share of carries to Mockobee and another back who, by definition, were much less effective. In 2024, Tracy and the rest of the unit had departed so it was just Mockobee and Illinois transfer Reggie Love, with many figuring Love to be the new lead back as he was with the Illini. But Mockobee had something of a breakout season, as odd as that is to say about a guy who was in his third year as lead back, because this time analytically speaking he actually deserved to be.
Mockobee’s run style is somewhat unorthodox — he’s a bit taller and an upright runner — but he makes such a great inside cut on outside zone runs that Drew told me he’s earned a team nickname for how he uses the limp leg to fool defenses. More importantly, it was clear how much of his 55% success rate and 4.9 adjusted YPC — which outdid Love by over 10 percentage points in efficiency and a full yard in average running behind the same line and controlling for field position effects, absolutely incredible overperformance — was Mockobee earning his yards himself, something I hadn’t necessarily seen in his previous two seasons.
Love has graduated, and he and Mockobee were the only two backs getting any meaningful carries last year. In garbage time, then-true freshman mid 3-star #23 RB Merriweather burned his redshirt playing in every game, and non-scholarship back Elijah Jackson joined him. Jackson has transferred out but Merriweather returns.
They’d taken three additions, four-year Virginia Tech backup #24 RB M. Thomas, and mid 3-star recruits #20 RB J. Thomas (they don’t seem to be related) and Ziaire Stevens, however Stevens left the team this June after enrolling early. I’ve seen the older Thomas on a couple projects that have taken me to ACC country over the years though he never left a big impression on me because he’s always been behind someone else; Drew said Merriweather is the most physically talented of the backs (he’s definitely the biggest at 6’2”, they seem to prefer taller backs as the whole room is six-foot or taller) but confirmed my hunch that Merriweather was going to cook a bit longer before taking on the load and this is what the career backup Thomas was brought in for. It’ll likely be Mockobee first then the older Thomas, with Merriweather playing as he’s ready — perhaps taking over the RB2 spot by the end of the year, if he’s coming along well — and the freshman Thomas redshirting or as emergency depth.
Purdue loses their most productive receiving target in tight end Max Klare, who transferred to Ohio State, and his sparsely used backup Drew Biber, who transferred to Minnesota. Redshirting freshman Tayvion Galloway transferred out as well. The team’s longtime fullback, which I’ll discuss here since I think his replacement is listed as a tight end, was Ben Furtney who’s now graduated, although Furtney virtually never got touches either as runs, targets, or gadget plays. They’d had a third tight end who was supposed to be in the rotation, #81 TE Burhenn, but he was injured early in the year and only came back at the end, getting no targets, so 2024 counted as a redshirt year.
Burhenn apparently saw the field in every game his true freshman year back in 2023, though I only saw him in meaningful play on one incomplete target apiece in weeks 9, 10, and 11, until the final week of the season in which every other tight end was out and he stepped up against Indiana with several big plays (though this was pre-Cignetti Indiana, and who didn’t). Drew said he could be an NFL talent but he’s had trouble staying healthy, with a broken ankle — a separate injury from the one that kept him out for most of the 2024 season — sidelining Burhenn during Spring 2025 practices.
There are four tight end additions, five if the new fullback is counted. Two look like developmental guys, mid 3-stars #41 TE Grimmett, a prep recruit, and #85 TE Puccinelli who redshirted last year at Wake Forest. The two senior UNLV transfers have long playing histories but appear to be exclusively blockers – #87 TE Earls who’s 6’8” but has never been targeted in two years and 21 game appearances, and #44 TE C. Moore who’s really a fullback going back to his first school, Kansas State (which Drew also writes about so he’s covered Moore extensively). That leaves #17 TE Walker, a low 4-star from the 2023 cycle who signed with Maryland then transferred to Auburn, but in two years both staffs — each of which love throwing to tight ends — have essentially passed on him and he only has a handful of targets for a very poor average.
Drew’s conclusion, and I have to agree, is that the tight end unit is looking like a binary proposition – either Burhenn is healthy and productive, or he’s not and they’ve just got a bunch of blockers. Though that said, they might need a lot of blocking help.
The previous staff had a preferred body type at wide receiver, skewing most of their player acquisitions and virtually all of their meaningful targets to 6’3” wideouts. The new staff seems to have an equal and opposite preferrence for 6’0” guys who are all within 10 lbs of each other, and just about everybody from last year’s room as transferred out.
Those were the two primary targets Jahmal Edrine and Jaron Tibbs, and on the other end of the spectrum Shamar Rigby, CJ Smith, and Leland Smith with 20 meaningful targets between those three … all five were 6’3” or over and have transferred out, as has another tall 2024 recruit who’d redshirted, Donovan Hamilton. On the other hand, four guys who were about 6’0” and weren’t really used at all have now left despite three of the four being pretty productive in previous seasons: UCLA transfer Kam Brown and four-year backup Andrew Sowinski graduated, while Juco Jayden Dixon-Veal and redshirt sophomore Ryne Shackelford (he’s the exception) transferred out.
That’s ten wideouts out of the room, and remarkably we’re still not done because three more who transferred in for 2025 won’t be available. Nathan Leacock from Tennessee and Isaiah Myers from Charlotte both committed in January, but left after Spring practices in May for UNC and WKU respectively. Charles Ross, a prototypical bounce-back guy who initially signed with Nevada in 2019 then was building a great career for three years 2021-23 at San José State but USC couldn’t figure out how to use him in 2024, and was looking like a leading candidate for a starting spot in 2025. But after Drew and I recorded, we learned some unfortunate medical news and Ross is no longer with the team, and Drew told me by email that he’s under the impression Ross will take a medical retirement.
Of the the four returners, only one got some meaningful play – 2022 low 4-star #8 WR Morrissette who’d transferred in from Georgia, though it was only on 15 targets outside garbage time and his per-target numbers were literally unbelievable, under 44% success rate and 4.9 adjusted YPT. From watching the tape, both Drew and I feel he has to be better than those numbers indicate and it was just the structure of the offense — he’d get immediately walloped on catching the ball with no room to run — but there’s no way to suss out how much better if at all. The other three returners are all young mid 3-stars, two of whom are like Morrissette and almost everyone else that the new staff has taken in the same six foot, 195 lbs body type — #6 WR A. Branch and #11 WR Harris — but the last is unique on the team for being the shortest guy of any unit, #10 WR Watson at 5’9”, so if they play a traditional shifty slot man at all he’s their only candidate.
Ross aside, there are seven additions into the unit, one prep and six transfers. The freshman recruit is the other unique player on the opposite end, low 4-star #9 WR J. Hall at 6’4”, and Drew said there’s a chance he plays simply because of his uniqueness and that he seems physically developed already, or that perhaps the staff gives him a shot in four easier games at the beginning of the year and defer the decision on redshirting till that point.
Three of the transfers are from the 2024 cycle, but of varying experience. High 3-star #19 WR Washington redshirted at Utah and didn’t see the field at all. Mid 3-star #12 WR Co. Smith got about one target a game for Tulsa, but made them count with pretty high yardage per reception. Mid 4-star #0 WR Tuggle played in a couple games at Georgia as he redshirted, then was suspended in March of this year following a reckless driving arrest (Drew happens to live in Athens and spoke personally about the madness of the driving culture there, as well as the hope that a fresh start away from it will be good).
Two of the three remaining older transfers have bounce-back histories like Ross did. One is #13 WR Horton who initially signed at Marshall in 2020 and put together a promising season his third year there then went to West Virginia and had a similarly promising season but was limited by a shoulder injury; however when he transferred to FAU in 2024 he missed the entire season with foot surgery. Another is #2 WR M. Jackson, who I’d written about as a misutilized wideout at USC in 2023 as he was one of the above-average success rate targets who was getting fed a lot less than a couple of severely below-average efficiency targets Riley was forcing the ball to; he transferred to Georgia in 2024 and they refused to throw him the ball at all despite fielding the worst receiver corps in the country for drops. The final transfer had a different profile, though; #5 WR Magwood has simply been a consistently but seldomly used backup for his last four seasons, first at Kentucky then UCF, generating about a hundred receiving yards each year.
This is a very large pool of guys, most of whom might as well be clones of each other in terms of body type, with a couple having some more talent on paper and a couple others with some more college experience, but none looking like they’re head-and-shoulders in front of anybody else here. Drew and I both figured there were probably a couple of guys with the inside track going into Fall camp (though one of them was Ross, unfortunately), but that this looks pretty wide open and that they’re just going to let it play out and go with whoever proves it, perhaps extending the competition into the Fall season and narrowing the rotation over the course of the year. I think it’s the right approach – playing favorites doesn’t get you anything, giving yourself plenty of options does.
The offensive line unit looks like it got hit by a daisy cutter. All five starters are gone and nearly the entirety of the depth has transferred out. The only remaining scholarship linemen are a Notre Dame transfer from a couple years ago who’s making a heroic recovery from a devastating auto accident, two mid 3-star freshmen who redshirted last year, and a couple of guys who originally walked on but Drew surprised me on the podcast by saying they’d gotten scholarships. The 2025 line will probably be constructed out of the portal, likely four starters, which empirically poses massive problems for cohesion in the first season even if they’re individually high value linemen.
The 2024 starting line from left to right was Corey Stewart, Mahamane Moussa, Gus Hartwig, DJ Wingfield, and Marcus Mbow. Steward and Hartwig signed UDFAs with the Chargers and Jets respectively, while Mbow was drafted in the 5th round by the Giants – Purdue’s only three players taken by the NFL. Moussa and Wingfield transferred out and will probably start for Louisville and USC. Drew and I puzzled over these outcomes for a bit, since the line’s performance last year was shaky at best, but they at least all hit consistent measurables for their frames and had a lot of experience so I suppose the desireability was understandable … or at least we could see other programs talking themselves into believing they could make these guys work out.
Ten reserve linemen transferred out, which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before, even in the other massive roster replacement projects. The departures are: Jaden Ball, Anthony Boswell, Jaekwon Bouldin, Jalen Grant, Rod Green, Luke Griffin, Jordan King, Jimmy Liston, Aaron Roberts, and Joshua Sales.
This means totally reconstructing the unit from scratch, and so half or more of the portal additions this cycle don’t really look like they’re in contention for serious playing time in 2025 but rather are time-staggered adds to the developmental pipeline for class balance instead of scooping up one giant prep group.
The eight additions who I suspect are those developmental adds rather than immediate contenders are true freshmen #63 OL J. Johnson and #68 OL Veluri, five redshirt freshmen in #56 OL T. Green from the FCS ranks, #58 OL Purvis and #51 OL Vicari (both from UNLV), #71 OL Easley from Georgia, and #77 OL Nave from Kentucky, and #54 OL Timosciek who originally came to Purdue as a QB, transferred to Bowling Green as a TE, and returns to Purdue as a lineman (Drew’s comment was that his true talent as a Big Ten player may be eating). They join the two returning redshirt freshmen from Purdue’s 2024 cycle, #70 OL Parrott and #50 OL Randle in making a pretty healthy ten-man base of developmental young guys spread out through multiple original signing years.
The most significant returner is #79 OT Tanona, a mid 4-star who signed with Notre Dame in 2022 but never got the opportunity to play there as he suffered traumatic brain injury and significant weight loss recovering from a car crash. He was finally able to take the field during some limited backup action in 2024 for Purdue, and Drew said that he looks completely ready to go for the Fall and will be the starting left tackle, perhaps the best lineman on the team. Drew also told me about senior #78 OT Coly, who’d previously come over from the NAIA, and #76 OG E. Trent (brother of Purdue inspiration Tyler) earning scholarships; I think they look like the most likely depth options at tackle and guard simply because they’re not freshmen like the rest of the depth, though Drew pointed out that Easley from Georgia as the highest rated of the freshmen transfers might have a shot at backup play too.
The remaining four transfers — if for no other reason than that they’re the only ones who aren’t freshman and they’ve played before — look like they’ll comprise the starting lineup along with Tanona. Those are: #74 OL J. St John who initially signed at Arkansas in 2020 but didn’t really play for the first three years then transferred to UNLV where he’s been the starting left tackle for the last two seasons; #62 OL Vaccaro who somehow wound up in Manitoba after prepping in Florida but has started for all three years, at LT as a freshman and LG for the next two, and won several U Sports (Canada’s NCAA) awards; #55 OL Joiner who got five starts at left guard at Auburn last year as a redshirt freshman; and #72 OL McCoskey who was the left tackle starter as a true freshman and sophomore at FCS Indiana State.
Other than starting four portal linemen (which longtime readers might fear could crash the simulation), the oddest thing here is moving everybody a bit out of position – Drew said St John will go from LT to LG, Vaccaro from LG to C, Joiner from LG to RG, and McCoskey from LT to RT. None of that is as weird as, say, moving from tackle to guard, it’s all within basic assignment norms, but this is one of the things that makes transferring tough on linemen – adjustments to new spots.
Defense
Despite losing every starter, coming off one of the poorest defensive performances in the country last year, and going through a scheme change, the defense looks set to be pretty comfortable in 2025. The staff clearly has this foot forward and they inherited and then built upon a surprising amount of playable depth on the line, and most of the problems last year had to do with a very high pressure exotic scheme that they just couldn’t execute whereas this more basic scheme seems far more achievable.
Drew described DC/LB coach Scherer as Odom’s protégé on the podcast – he played for Odom as a linebacker at Mizzou then started his coaching career as a GA there, then followed him to Arkansas as an analyst and LB coach, and again to UNLV as DC. The linebackers are the premier defensive position in Odom and Scherer’s 4-3 / 4-2-5 defense with everything being funneled either to the MIKE or spilled outside and strung along to the sideline – the DBs and only one of the backers wind up with all the tackles, while the DL and the rest of the backers don’t really rack up stats because they’re force defenders, but actually the essential ones to making the play.
The previous scheme was a three-down front and this will be a four-down one, although given how many departures there are this was as opportune of a time for a change as one is likely to see. A couple of the returning bodies aren’t exactly perfect for a four-down front, but we talked through on the podcast how they might be repurposed for specialist roles and otherwise this transition looks like it’ll go pretty cleanly. To organize the discussion I hypothetically moved departing players out of the rooms where they were last year and into where I think they would have gone had they remained – this made the numbers all click as the outs and ins match up for each new unit.
The depth for the defensive line units, tackles and ends, looks excellent … in fact I remarked on the podcast to Drew that several of the four-down fronts I’d already profiled in this series throughout the Big Ten were in far worse shape and just one stubbed toe away from disaster, while Odom could give lessons on constructing a deep line to his ostensibly more prestigious peers.
For the tackles (or guys I think would be DTs in this front had they stayed), they’ve lost the starting nose Cole Brevard, and guys I would characterize as primary rotational linemen in Joe Anderson, Jeffrey M’ba, and Damarjhe Lewis, though Lewis got hurt relatively early in the season and Mo Omonode took over his rep count. All of those transferred out except Anderson who graduated. A couple of redshirting freshmen also transferred out, Caleb Irving and Jamari Payne.
They return four guys into the new tackle unit, all of whom got substantial backup play last year: #97 DT Harkless who was behind Brevard at nose, and #98 DT Carlson, #55 DT Dinkins, and #18 DT Kennedy. Harkless, Carlson, and Kennedy are all built how you’d think, but Dinkins is a bit of an odd man out listed at 6’5” and 305 lbs … Drew suggested he’d be a specialist in the new defense and brought in for the 1-tech on passing downs as a penetrator, while Harkless would be the standard downs guy at 345 lbs.
The five additions are all transfers. Three of them have very similar backgrounds and the fourth is pretty close; namely multiple years of starting production at a non-Power school. Those are #90 DT Jeffries from Arkansas State, #52 DT M. Moore from Bowling Green and Akron before that, and #90 DT E. St John (brother of the o-line transfer) from the FCS ranks who all started out in 2023 and I believe have been playing both years since they were true freshmen, plus senior Div-II transfer #53 DT Burney who’s been very productive for even longer albeit at a much lower level. Drew said the most excitement, however, is about the guy with the completely different profile than the other eight in the unit, #13 DT Lindsey who was a low 4-star in the 2024 cycle and redshirted at Auburn, without even garbage time play.
Given the extensive prior play, appropriate playing size across the board, and balanced mix of upside talent and lower level experience, this is actually more bodies than prior experience indicates would be necessary to find four playable guys for the DT rotation and adequate emergency depth behind them. Two of them could be abducted by UFOs on the way to class and they’d still be on-model for depth.
With apologies to scheme nerds for the re-arrangement, the would-be defensive end unit loses three productive players and one bluechip who never seemed to work out, but brings back two guys who didn’t get a ton of play but both this staff and the previous staff have been very high on. The departures are Will Heldt, Shitta Sillah, and Jireh Ojata who had about a hundred tackles during meaningful play between them, as well as Joe Strickland who never saw the field in three years and transferred out. The returners are #8 DE Madden and #23 DE T. Smith, both of whom previously transferred in, from Georgia and Illinois respectively.
It looks like the staff took three “play right away” transfers and four developmental additions, though one of the freshmen prep recruits, Rashad Jones, isn’t listed on the roster at this point and Drew said he’s likely not coming so it’s more like three and three. The two preps who are on the roster are #41 DE Alnutt and #19 DE Brooks, and they’ve also taken #58 DE Ismail from Michigan who’s only gotten pretty limited play since 2023 and probably needs some more developmental time.
The three potentially immediate impact transfers are all very productive seniors with a long history of generating havoc stats at non-Power schools. Those are #95 DE Charles from North Texas, #89 DE Mitchell from the FCS, and #91 DE Nunnally from Akron.
Drew told me that the staff is probably going to go with the returners Madden and Smith as the starters and they took the transfers as rotational guys behind them, which surprised me a bit – given how big the prior production gap is I would have expected at least an even battle. At any rate, if Madden and Smith really are ahead of all three senior transfers who are that experienced, it would mean five playable guys, plus a sixth if Ismail is finally coming online, and a couple of freshmen for emergency depth. And given how deep the tackle unit is (and linebackers as well), they won’t be bothered by some other thin room for a moonlighter, unlike certain other defenses I’ve written up this Summer.
There were two kinds of off-ball linebackers in the previous scheme, a MIKE who stayed at depth and a “switch” (I still haven’t figured out what Walters calls this position) who’d swap between lining up off- and on-ball. The primary switch, Kydran Jenkins, has graduated, while the primary MIKE, Yanni Karlaftis, transferred to Minnesota. I believe Karlaftis’s backup was going to be #20 LB Berglund, but he got hurt early in the season and was replaced by former walk-on Hudson Miller; Berglund returns and Drew said he’s got a high ceiling but is still dealing with injury stuff, while Miller transferred out. The only returner besides Berglund is #27 LB Davis, a 2023 low 3-star who hasn’t played in the last two years and Drew said has taken some time to get up to speed. So unless the pair of returners show a lot more reliability than they have so far, it’s probably going to be a transfer-dominated LB corps.
The most certain to get a job is #16 LB Powell, who was one of the two starters last year at UNLV and had come over with Scherer from Arkansas. They also got #5 LB Correa from UNLV, who got significant backup play as a true freshman last year for Scherer. There are two other transfers who are connected after a fashion to Scherer as well, #11 LB Dean and #10 LB Sanford who signed with Arkansas in 2023 but haven’t really played in the last two years – Scherer had left for UNLV during their freshman season so this will be the first time he’ll coach them, but Drew confirmed he was involved in initially recruiting them and had gone back to get them, as it were. The last transfer is #6 LB Ellis, who was an incredibly productive FCS linebacker as a true freshman last year with some of the highest havoc stats for his position in Division-I ball over the last decade.
They signed two true freshmen, #30 LB Meese and Sam Steward, however Steward doesn’t appear on the roster and Drew said he’s another who looks like he’s not coming; in fact the day we recorded Purdue took an unrated Juco, BJ Mayes, and it was hard not to connect the dots that Mayes is to be replacement developmental stock.
Drew told me that Powell’s job is “non-negotiable”, which is a bit eyebrow-raising but I’ll buy it. They’ll play a 4-2-5 on most downs and switch to a 4-3 when they go heavy so I expect just about anybody who’s playable to play – Correa was clearly being groomed, Ellis will probably translate, and out of two shots apiece from the Arkansas transfers and returners they’ll likely get at least one from each pair to pop, so that would get them to five without touching the freshman and new Juco. That’s just the number they need to hit for a good rotation in a such a defense.
The “down” safety in Walters’ defense would usually play in the box and was almost indistinguishable from an inside linebacker; that job swapped back and forth last year (for reasons I never quite understood, an injury was involved but that didn’t explain all of it) between Joseph Jefferson and Antonio Stevens. The “post” safety who played virtually every snap for the last two seasons since his true freshman year was Dillon Thieneman. The only backup I saw was Anthony Brown. They had four 2024 recruits, one of whom was a mid 3-star and played in every game I think on special teams, Ty Hudkins, and the other three redshirted without seeing the field, Koy Beasley, Luke Williams, and #32 DB Marable. They’d taken one transfer, #3 DB S. Smith (he was in #46 last year during the Spring game) from the FCS ranks but he didn’t see the field during the Fall. Seven of those nine safeties have transferred out, only Marable and Smith remain.
The corners lose almost everyone as well: Kyndrich Breedlove who played the inside cornerback, as well as Botros Alisandro, Markevious Brown, Tarrion Grant, and Nyland Green who played on the outside in a history too convoluted to repeat since they’ve all transferred out. Youngsters Derrick Rogers and Earl Kulp didn’t see the field and transferred out as well, and at long last Salim Turner-Muhammad has graduated. There are three returners, each of whom the official stat sheet says played in a few games but I don’t have them on my tally sheet so it must have been garbage time or special teams: mid 3-stars #1 CB Bradford (in jersey #6 last year) and #4 CB Hines from the 2024 cycle who evidently burned their redshirts, and NIU transfer #26 CB Z. Williams (Drew intimated he was a strategic acquisition to help recruit his brother Luke, not that this has paid off, and isn’t a serious candidate for play).
The scheme is changing on the back end as well, with the safeties playing more typical deep roles and the nickel switching from a man cover corner to more of a tackling safety position. Drew said to move Bradford over to the new nickel spot, and that in a big surprise the previous FCS transfer Smith has been the star of Spring ball and taken over a leadership role, and will be the starter at nickel.
With the nickel rotation taken care of by the returners, the two deep safety spots look to be more than amply covered by six highly experienced senior transfers. Those are: #14 DB Coffey from Memphis, #25 DB McLaurin from Houston and WVU before that, #21 DB Ra-El who was very productive at Old Dominion but hurt at Memphis last year (and there was a scandal Drew told me about which he denies about sending intel to an opponent), #9 DB Slusher who was great at Arkansas in 2021 but has battled injuries since then there and at Colorado, #2 DB Toney who was the only Nevada defender who could tackle in 2023 but TCU couldn’t figure out how to use him last year, and #7 DB Wakley who’s somehow been playing for seven years in the state of Utah, most recently for BYU. They’d also taken three preps, low 3-star #15 DB Cobb, high 3-star #28 DB Barbee (I couldn’t believe it either but Drew confirmed he’s Ray Barbee’s kid, what a world), and Antonio Parker, but Parker is the third of three recruits not listed on the roster and Drew said probably isn’t coming.
Drew went with McLaurin and Wakley, which I understood – of the three who were productive in 2024, those two have had relatively uninterrupted play while Coffey has had a long and tough history as his first year was interrupted by covid, he missed all of 2021 with an injury, then Memphis converted him to a running back in 2022 and hardly played him, and it wasn’t until 2023 that they switched him back to a safety and he’s been a highly productive backup for the last two seasons. But in the spirit of the bounce-back season which this staff has clearly embraced — and DB coach Clark who comes over from Memphis and has gotten four former Memphis secondary players to come with him is obviously a believer in this philosophy — I wouldn’t be surprised if any of the safeties out for a redemption year wins a job. Regardless, depth is more than adequate and they should be in a position to loan out to the corners — or perhaps to the nickel spot and then free up Bradford to switch back to corner — if need be.
In addition to what is effectively the only returning corner, Hines, there are six new faces to that unit. Three are experienced transfers who should go into competition right away, and three look like developmental adds. The first three are #0 CB Grimes, who is perhaps Exhibit A in this bounce-back model as he was a productive 5-star who signed at UNC in 2020, then when he transferred to Texas A&M the Aggies blew it with him, and UNLV took him and he played like a stud again; #12 CB Turner who was a low 4-star signee at Ohio State but didn’t play there, then transferred to Boston College and got a few starts last year; and #29 CB TD Williams who was evidently a productive FCS corner (his school listed him with 10 pass break-ups last year which would be amazing if that’s not inflated; I haven’t been able to watch his tape). The more developmental looking guys are #22 CB Cummings who redshirted at Memphis last year, #17 CB T. Wright who signed with Memphis in 2023 then transferred to Mississippi State last year but didn’t play at either school, and prep recruit #38 CB Otey, all low-to-mid 3-stars.
Grimes is a proven commodity and Drew said he’s got a similarly unassailable position in the backfield as Powell has at the second level. His bet was for Turner to get the other job, since he’s a former bluechip and has some starting experience at an ACC school, though that doesn’t move the needle overmuch for me and I wouldn’t be shocked if he gets beat out by someone else.
Relevant here is that the staff had gotten another transfer corner, Chad Brown who was a starter at Nevada last year after three previous years as a backup, but he’s not listed on the roster. I had asked Drew if the staff had missed their numbers at cornerback, since even if we take Grimes out of it and just look at the other spot it’s two experienced guys (Turner and Williams, and neither are sure-fire since Turner doesn’t have a ton and Williams is from the FCS) and four inexperienced guys in the returner Hines, the Memphis-based transfers Cummings and Wright, and the prep Otey, which is fractionally off what they’ve given themselves to find playable guys and depth behind them for every other unit on the team. He responded that if they had to do it all over again the staff would probably take one more experienced corner transfer, which is when I realized that they had done exactly that in Brown, but he just isn’t on the roster for some reason. There are plenty of open questions about Purdue in 2025, but maybe the one that’s bugging me the most is all these unexpected roster absences as Fall camp begins.
