Inexperienced O-line making progress, still plenty of work to do

Dale Williams' voice went up an octave and his eyes got a bit bigger when he let out a short, quick, exasperated "woo."

He was trying to imitate his reaction the first time of seeing what he had to work with on Purdue's offensive line.

It’s not quite what he had at his previous stop, Western Kentucky, where the line paved the way for record-breaking offensive numbers and has a likely first-round tackle.

At Purdue, Williams has only five upperclassmen of the 15 players on the roster for spring ball.

Five of the 15 are walk-ons. One of those 10 scholarship players is out this spring while recovering from offseason surgery.

That player, Matt McCann, is one of only two on the unit who has a full season of starting experience. But neither McCann nor Kirk Barron, the center, has more than a year’s worth of that.

So forgive Williams for his response to the new gig.

He knew it’d be a challenge, but he’s had those before, specifically mentioning 2005 at FAU with Howard Schnellenberger.

“They’ve never been taught this scheme, this system, so it’s installing, day by day, step by step. It’s like being a teacher, which coaching is teaching. So I’ve got to take my time and cannot get frustrated because they don’t know,” Williams said after Friday’s practice, Purdue’s eighth of the spring. “Sure, it’s challenging. When I was at the previous institution, I had a lot of upperclassmen who had been doing it four or five years, so you could fine-tune them, making them better with individual components. Here, it’s technique, it’s scheme, it’s everything. We’ve been practices for two hours, and we do a lot of stuff. It’s going to take a long time to get it done, but that’s why I’m here, to make them better.”

Williams has kept mostly the same players together with the first-team line: Redshirt freshman left tackle Grant Hermanns, junior center Barron, junior right guard Bearooz Yacoobi and walk-on junior right tackle Eric Swingler. Sophomore Peyton Truitt started the spring at the other guard spot with the 1s but has since given way to junior Mike Mendez, who has started a handful of games at tackle.

That group had never worked together as a unit before this spring, and it’s been a process.

Co-defensive coordinator Nick Holt hasn’t necessarily helped matters, either, showing a variety of fronts, movements and blitzes early on in the spring.

That has perhaps exacerbated the young O-line’s growth — there have been some practices, the offensive line’s first and second team has combined to give up double-digit “sacks” in team periods — but it’s also allowed the group to get valuable repetitions.

Williams said he’s seen progress over the first three weeks of spring, and so have his players.

“The progress we’ve had is tremendous,” Barron said. “The first day inside run, we probably had, like, negative-four yards on the ground. Now we’re rolling off the ball. We’re getting big-time runs, which is something different around here. We’re also hitting the deep ball. It’s not just the offensive line when it comes to running the ball, obviously that’s a huge deal, but it’s a whole group effort and we’re definitely improved.”

Williams said it’s been helpful that the group is coachable and eager to learn. There’s certainly a lot of that needed, considering Williams said he’s teaching different techniques than the players have seen before. But with most of the group having had only one offensive line coach before Williams, it’s actually not been too bad of a learning curve.

“There’s pieces here. There’s clay here. It needs to be molded,” he said. “I look at Grant Hermanns, I go, ‘Look at you. I wish I was your size. I’d (have) played 14 years in the NFL, I wouldn’t be here today with you.’ There’s the size, but they’ve just got to get plays. It’s the repetitions, over and over and over. It’s getting them to come off and punch and strike.

“Are they better after the eighth practice? Yes. Are they a finished product? No. There’s been progress made by each individual and there has been progress made by the group.”

• Three players were added to the injury list Friday when starting running back Markell Jones (unknown), safety T.J. Jallow (head) and defensive end Chazmyn Turner (knee) spent the practice rehabbing.

Coach Jeff Brohm said he's not sure how serious just yet Turner's right knee injury is, but the defensive end who'd been getting snaps with the first-team line of late will be out "for a little bit."

Turner, Jallow and Jones joined other projected starters/players who have worked with the 1s this spring on the sideline in DE Austin Larkin, DT Lorenzo Neal, McCann, among other key role players (Brian Lankford-Johnson, D'J Edwards, etc).

"We’ve had more than I would like because we have cut them some slack at the beginning of practice to a certain degree. We’ve got to find a way to work through it," Coach Jeff Brohm said. "The younger guys who are in there have to work hard and take advantage of their reps. Right now at certain positions, I don’t know who’s going to play. So the fact they’re getting reps is very good and we can get a lot out of it. I think they are working hard. They just have to work through the mistakes we make."

• Nearly halfway through spring ball, and it's still a regular occurrence in practice for either Brohm or position coaches to be adjusting their players, literally moving them to the right alignments, especially at receiver and in the secondary.

Brohm said he'd like the players to know more at this point in spring.

"Sometimes when you get them in a room, they know a lot more than when you’re going fast on the field. It’s got to eventually translate on the field," he said. "They’re studying and they’re gradually getting better, but the quick recall is not there yet. Sometimes we tell them when they don’t know, sometimes we tell them just to remind them to make sure. I think there’s a little bit of that.

"I think, in time, they will get better and know. As we get to games, we’ll narrow things down and we’ll know a little more exactly what we’re doing. Right now, we’re throwing a lot at them."

• McCann was back in full pads and knee braces for the first time this spring, getting limited work off to the side with an athletic trainer. McCann is out this spring after having offseason ankle surgery.

"We want to ease him back into it,"Brohm said. "He's still not full go, but we can do a few things with him and just want to get him in better shape and make sure he's physically in condition so he can have a productive summer."

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