Health of the "utmost importance" for Purdue ahead of spring game
With several weeks of spring practice in the books, Purdue now prepares for its annual spring game in Ross-Ade Stadium after a one year hiatus after injuries and stadium construction axed last year's event.
Ryan Walters has seen enough out of his group to know what pieces he has in place, which will result in a focus on remaining healthy as the team's priority during Saturday's spring game in West Lafayette.
"To stay healthy. We've had good really good work throughout spring ball, guys working the right way. So we want to get them an opportunity to have fun out there, but obviously the goal is to stay healthy," Walters said.
With remaining healthy being of the utmost importance, the Boilermakers will take a conservative approach to the first spring game with Walters at the helm.
The starting offense and the second team defense will be on a team, with the starting defense and the second team offense will oppose them. When the starters are in, they will not tackle to the ground, while the second unit will be going against each other live.
"If it's 3rd and 1, it would just have to be an automatic first down, so there's no hard collisions there. If it's goal to go from the one, it'll be an automatic touchdown. If we have to punt, we'll just take the NCAA average flip the field. Kick off returns and stuff like that, we'll just start on the 25," Walters revealed of the plan for Saturday. "We'll still get some game like flow, but just modified a little bit to take care of each other."
Walters also disclosed that he does not expect any Boilermakers to be sidelined due to injury on Saturday, which is a stark contrast to what the situation would have been last year had a game actually taken place.
"I don't anticipate so just because of the format. You know, we might pull a couple guys after halftime. We'll just kind of get a feel for it," Walters said.
Purdue has put in good work over the last few weeks in the eyes of Walters, who wants to utilize this opportunity in front of fans to get guys more experience playing with fans in attendance and some added pressure.
"We can see how people handle practicing or playing in front of crowds, especially some guys that haven't been here before or haven't had a lot of planning experience. I think anytime you can fabricate some in game atmosphere and added pressure is good, so that the first time you're doing it isn't when it's live bullets. I think that's the thing that we're trying to get the most out of," Walters said.
Walters has also been impressed with his team's improvement throughout the spring and where they were as a group a year ago. Aside from on-field flashes of talent, the Boilermakers have come together to build a closer bond than ever before.
"Biggest difference from a mental makeup standpoint is just there's no egos. There aren't any selfish individuals. Everybody understands what we're trying to get accomplished and then works their tail off to get that done. We also have a lot more depth, gotten bigger, gotten stronger, gotten faster. The standards a lot higher than it was a year ago," Walters said.
"I think that's what I've been most impressed with is we have 27 newcomers at mid year and just the team's ability to come together. We've provided opportunities for organic relationships to foster, so I think that also helped, but we got bunch of guys in the locker room that love football and have no ego," Walters said.
Purdue will put the finishing touches on a productive spring practice session with Saturday's spring game, followed by two more practices next week before shutting things down for summer workouts.