After practice on Tuesday, wide receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard had his wideouts running through the Jugs machine over and over.
The goal: Catch 100 consecutive without a drop. Shephard, as he does, was riding his group, imploring them to not let the ball hit the turf. It did at least once, drawing his ire and forcing a redo. But the Boilermakers did get there, hitting the century mark.
Following is a Q&A with Shephard, who is Purdue's passing game coordinator, following the drill:
GoldandBlack.com: You want them to catch the ball.
Shephard: “Certainly, that’s the requirement. Receivers catch the ball. Running backs run it. Quarterbacks throw it. Offensive line blocks. That’s what they’re supposed to do, catch the ball.”
GoldandBlack.com: After coming off a game that you had some drops, how do you their attention?
Shephard: “Oh, I think you just keep moving forward. That’s the thing about football, you’ve got to just forget about the past. Quarterbacks, if they were to throw an interception or a guy was to fumble, something like that, you’ve got to move on to the next play. You cannot just continue to focus on the past, you’ve got do things to prevent those things from happening in the future. I tell those guys that all the time; it’s about fixing things, making things better in the long run.”
GoldandBlack.com: When you have drops, do you think they are contagious, like one can lead to the next?
Shephard: “Nah, I don’t think that that exists at all. I show each one of them what was the reason for the drop and I think it’s about focus. Guys just have to focus a little bit more and do the small things correctly. And they agree, when I show them, ‘Hey, this is why this happened and this is why that happened. And OK, this is what we need to do.’ I once was told by a really good coach, ‘Hey, don’t tell them what’s wrong. Tell them how to fix it.’ I try to do both really, ‘This is what you did, but this is what I want you to do in the future.’ And they’re grasping that.”
GoldandBlack.com: What’s your overall evaluation?
Shephard: “Very average right now. That’s my personal feeling about it. Do I think we have a lot more in us? There’s no question about it. It’s on me as a coach to bring it out of them, get it out one way or the other. You’ve got to figure out the best way to get those guys to play to the level that they’re capable of playing and that’s what we’re working on. We’re pushing them every day, pushing them more and more and more. In some cases, guys are responding.
“Jackson Anthrop has responded the entire time. Guys like Greg Phillips have gotten a tremendous amount better. Anthony Mahoungou, those guys are getting a lot better and we’ve got to bring those other guys along.”
GoldandBlack.com: You’re a fiery guy. Do you have to find different ways to reach each player or do they have to adapt to you?
Shephard: “You definitely have to find different ways for each person. Out on the field, there’s not a whole lot of time to start changing personalities out here. That’s what most people get to come out here and see, but they don’t see in the meeting rooms, in my office, when those guys come up and talk to me one-on-one and so on. Or even when I’m discussing things with them in the meeting room with the whole group. One approach for one guy might work, but for another, it’ll be a different way. Out here on the field, though, it’s time to go. The expectation is that you learn it in the room, then come out here and execute.”
GoldandBlack.com: The newcomers are getting worked in, maybe more last week than in Game 1. What is the difficulty as a new player, trying to learn the offense and play at a high level?
Shephard: “And that’s it exactly. You’ve got to learn the offense to the letter. You’ve got to cross your Ts and dot your Is in this offense, because we do do a lot of different things. You’ve got to be able to grasp it and we try to help as much as we can, with different concepts and so on and so forth, so that they understand the concepts then you can go out there and play fast. That’s the thing that if you get in the room with them, they know exactly what to do, they know exactly what’s going on. It’s a matter of when you get out here and the bullets are flying fast, having that confidence to say, ‘Yeah, I know it. Now let me just go execute it.’”
GoldandBlack.com: What specifically is it about this offense that makes it difficult? Is it choices pre-snap?
Shephard: “Nah. No. We just do a lot of stuff. That’s truly the answer. We do a lot of stuff. I don’t know how defenses prepare all the time, because we do a lot of stuff. From one game to the next game, it could be completely different, so literally when we come out here on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, on a Friday, on a Saturday morning, we may say, ‘You know what? We want to run this that we ran back in camp and it correlates with this particular concept that we’re already doing, so let’s execute it.’ Sometimes it’s a little bit tough for some of these guys, but for the most part we’ve been able to get them to do exactly like that.
“To be honest about it, those guys like Anthrop and Mahoungou and Phillips, they understand the concepts, so that’s the reason why they have been able to be out there quickly, those other guys got here so late. Corey (Holmes) not getting here until camp pretty much and Isaac (Zico) and Terry (Wright), those guys were here just in the summer and of course we can’t be with them all summer, so they were pushed behind a little bit, but they’re learning, they are.”
GoldandBlack.com: A lot of repetition, then a lot of recall.
Shephard: “There you go, absolutely. You’ve got to have recall and quick recall. It’s one thing to be able to recall it, but to be able to recall it fast, that’s a whole other ballgame.”
GoldandBlack.com: This is an emphasis of yours, but are you getting enough yards after the catch?
Shephard: “At this point, there’s more opportunity out there for us to get more yards after the catch. I certainly believe that. They’re working hard at it, to try to do just that. But we’ve got to get more of those opportunities and when they come up, when they’re available, hopefully we’ll get them.”
GoldandBlack.com: How much does what the tight ends are doing help your guys on the outside?
Shephard: “Man, those tight ends are kicking butt right now, they’re doing a great job. I think as they continue to flourish in the offense, which in our offense tight ends have always been pretty good. You talk about Tyler Higbee who is currently playing for the Rams and Mitchell Henry, God bless his soul, who was playing for the Packers, those tight ends have always flourished in the offense, so this is really no different than what we’ve experienced in the past. We’ve got to get more production out there on the outside.”
GoldandBlack.com: Does it matter which quarterback is playing, Elijah Sindelar or David Blough? Sindelar throws a harder ball than Blough does. Should that matter from a receiver’s point of view?
Shephard: “No it does not. At the day of the day, like I tell them, if you have any aspiration of playing at the next level, you don’t know who the quarterback is going to be when you step in the door. You don’t know who the quarterback might be on the next play, so you’ve got to be able to adapt to whatever quarterback it is. It does not matter who the quarterback is.”
GoldandBlack.com: Based on what Missouri has done in the past — and it could change given the Tigers’ changes on defense after firing the coordinator last weekend — what do you anticipate it doing Saturday?
Shephard: “I think they’re going to play fast. Their head coach does a really good job and I kind of know a couple of those guys on that staff, they do a really good job coaching those guys and getting them in the right spot and making sure they know what they’re doing and they do it fast. Because of that, we’ve got to make sure we’re on top of things and make sure we’re executing everything that we’re supposed to. It’s going to be a challenge and we’re going to be up for the challenge. We have tough love for these guys, but they’ve been encouraged as well to go out there and play like they’re supposed to play, and that’s a consistent thing with them as well.”
GoldandBlack.com: Missouri more of a man or zone?
Shephard: “They do a mixture of both, definitely have some man concepts and some zone concepts that they like to do. They bring a variety of different blitzes, a lot of different blitzes, so we’ve got to be able to recognize it all. You don’t know, especially with whoever is going to call the plays for this next game, what they’re really wanting to specialize in and bring to the table, so what we’ve seen on film and studied, you don’t know if you’re going to see something different, so you really have to be prepared for everything.”
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