Purdue wide receivers coach and assistant head coach Cornell Ford was one of the key staffers brought along from UNLV to West Lafayette by head coach Barry Odom. The Indiana native spoke to the media last week about returning to his home state, what he wants to see from his unit, competition being at an all-time high, and more.
On competition being a theme leading into the fall:
"It's going to be all about competition this spring. The good thing is, when you're new, and we're all new, you walk into the room and nobody knows anybody and so anything that you did before you got here or what you did last year really doesn't matter. So from that perspective, we told them all jobs are open. There are no true starters in my mind right now, this thing will fluctuate up and down the depth chart, and the guys that compete on a daily basis, will be the guys that at the end of the spring will get a chance to be moved up to the top. And then we'll do it all over again during summer ball and fall camp, and we'll see where we are when September gets here."
On if anyone has caught his eye during winter workouts:
"Well right now, I mean, they're still all really new. Last week was the first time I actually saw them in person, open up and run for the first time. And that was really pleasing to see. We think we've got some guys there that can help us, that can push the secondary and get behind them a little bit. And so we feel pretty good about that. EJ Horton is a guy that can, he can run, he can fly. Some of the other guys I think are good players, but I really don't know yet. I mean, I don't really make much of a judgment on any of these guys until we put pads on and find out what they really can do."
Adding size to the group:
"We think that the size is always a factor, and we try to recruit to that, looking at these guys. And so like a young man like Nathan Leacock, this guy's got some length, he can run, he's bigger, little bit more physical. And then you match him up with DJ Hamilton, I think we've got some guys that can help us in that factor, but everybody else has got to be playmakers. You know, that's more so than anything else. I thought that getting guys that could do something with the ball after they made the catch was really critical to us."
How to get transfers to come in and be impactful right away:
I've always thought that guys that buy into your system. You know whatever their system is, the quicker they can do that and and not coming in with these preconceived notions of, you know, who they are and what they're expecting and all those kind of things, the quicker they can buy into what you're doing. I always think that's when you have the most success. And so and so far with this group, they've all been the right mindset. They've all have, have bought into our philosophy of, you know, hard, smart and tough. Now, we're not there yet, but, you know, they're on page with that. We don't have any, any guys trying to do their own thing right now. So that's, I think that's the first step.
Thoughts on returning to his home state as a coach:
"We had a recruiting function, and it was in the evening, and it just kind of started to snow. And literally, guys, it just kind of all hit me at once. It's like, my gosh, I haven't seen snow in five years, you know? I mean literally. So it was that was different, but it was cool. It's cool to be back here. It's cool to be back home, you know. I know a few folks here in the state, and they welcomed me back and not far from where I was born. So that's pretty cool, too. And got a few few folks to get some tickets for, I'll need to borrow a few, but it's pretty cool. I'm really enjoying it."
