Instilling 'belief' is Parker's priority, considering personnel challenges

Gerad Parker isn’t quite sure who will start at cornerback for Purdue Saturday, but there’s a good chance three of the top four options will be either first- or second-year players.

He doesn’t know if senior defensive tackle Jake Replogle will be healthy enough to return to the field against Minnesota after missing three game with a head injury and won’t say if the other two primary defensive tackle options, Lorenzo Neal (unknown) and Eddy Wilson (shoulder), are healthy either.

There’s a chance the Boilermakers also will be without senior starting guard Jason King, perhaps the team’s best offensive player, and that’d offer a considerable shake-up to an offensive line that already has been forced into playing a pair of redshirt freshmen tackles.

Purdue, simply, doesn’t have much quality depth at this point in its program. And as injuries pile up, that's been apparent.

There are no quick fixes from a personnel perspective, and Parker knows that. It’s one reason his emphasis has been on mindset, on the intangible of “belief," since becoming interim head coach on Oct. 16.

And it’s why, for the final four weeks of the season, it’ll continue to be.

“There obviously has been issues in being able to win games and having a belief in doing those things over the last three-and-a-half years,” Parker said on the Big Ten teleconference Tuesday, “and now you’re right in the fire of that (as interim coach). It’s something you knew was there, but the perspective changes and the responsibility changes as my job title changed. That’s the No. 1 thing we’re attacking and that I’m trying to push to attack. That’s never a short process.

“The tough thing is with that comes a need for success. Some of those come in small doses that aren’t always winning, but winning is the biggest piece that allows you to get over that hump. For us, moving forward, it’s always a factor because there have been a lot of bad feelings and bad results on a football field, so as you do that, it starts to become very heavy on your shoulders, as players, coaches and everybody. It’s my job to make sure these guys are still having fun playing a kid’s game and get them playing hard and believing in something bigger than themselves and that they can have great things happen to them. And then those things will, sooner or later, begin to happen.”

Parker is hoping for the sooner part of the equation.

And he’s encouraged by what he’s seen in six of eight quarters under his leadership. Against ranked teams the last two weeks, Purdue has either led or been tied at halftime. But against Nebraska two weeks ago, Purdue’s offense went scoreless in the second half, not even managing 100 yards, and the defense had two big mistakes that led to touchdowns in a 13-point loss. Last week against Penn State, the Boilermakers couldn’t overcome four second-half turnovers, and their defense continued to struggle defending the run, and they got blown out, 62-24.

The on-field problems that presented themselves in those second halves aren’t new. Purdue is second-to-last in the Big Ten in run defense and has ranked among the league’s worst — and country’s worst — in that category for years. Its offense has consistently struggled to replicate first-half success in the second half, perhaps an indication opposing teams are adjusting and Purdue can’t counter those adjustments.

It’s all produced an inability to win consistently.

But Parker says the key in the process of becoming better is about establishing trust in doing things the right way and preparing with the proper mindset.

“I think if we only work hard and the trust the process when it works and goes the right way, you’re never going to get there. Especially when you’re in a situation we’re in from these four years. You’re just not. The only thing I know for sure is this: If we continue to operate in a losing mentality, if we walk around like we’ve lost, if we talk like we’ve lost, if we eat and walk and fly to games like we lost, it’s never going to get fixed,” he said during his weekly Tuesday press conference. “It’ll never work. On the flip of that, if we continue to push, come out of that locker room like we did the first two games in the first half, if we keep pushing that message and it bleeds over into the third quarter, then the fourth quarter, I know that’s the only way it’s fixed. On one side of this, it can’t work. On the other side, it can but it ain’t a promise that it will. …

“We’ll keep pushing it and pushing the locker room. I know that side of it has a chance. I do. It gives us a chance. It gives the players a chance and the rest of it will take care of itself.”

Part of instilling belief, Parker says, is for Purdue’s players to perform in difficult situations. He wasn’t pleased last week with how the team fell into a here-we-go-again mentality after its second turnover of the half led immediately to a Penn State touchdown. The response, instead, needs to be that “belief” that games aren’t over in one play. That there must be a willingness to continue to fight. That players — and coaches — can’t accept what has become the norm. Because that norm has not been good.

“There has been a walk to that locker room at home that has been the same walk too many times,” Parker said. “That walk and the reaction of the fans, the empty stadium at the end of the game, all of things just come down on your shoulders, and if you can’t find a way to get that weight lifted and walk around and say, ‘It isn’t that bad. Hey, let’s go play a game. Pick your chest up, be a man, play this game with passion, speak it with passion, coach it with passion.’ If you talk about those things and get it engrained in them, they’ll start believing it. I believe that with all my heart. The more and more you do that, the better off you’re going to be. Wins certainly help that. But before you get to that point, you’ve got to expect those things and continue to stress how important it is to push that message and sooner or later it will take off.”

• Running back Richie Worship suffered an apparent left leg injury late against Penn State, and though Parker isn’t specific on injuries, he said Tuesday Worship’s is “not serious-serious.” Worship, who ultimately was carted off the field, was hurt when he was running to tackle a player after an interception and had his legs taken out on a block that was flagged as illegal. He won’t play this week, Parker said.

“It could have been real, real bad,” Parker said.

Without Worship and with starting back Markell Jones banged up, who will be Purdue’s No. 2 back? Three weeks ago, it appeared Brian Lankford-Johnson would have been the easy answer. In his first career start, Lankford rushed for 127 yards. But he also injured his shoulder, and he’d been limited to only 11 yards on four carries in the last four games. Against Penn State, he didn’t play on offense.

“He's been banged up as well, but to go along with that he's a pup, and sometimes those pups take some strong nurturing as they're young,” Parker said. “So he's getting that nurturing he needs in order to get to a position he needs to help us and be a consistent guy that will show up every day to come to work. We'll keep working on him to do it. He's a talented guy that … will have a great career here, but he also has to learn how to do it all the time.”

The other options would be David Yancey and Tario Fuller, who played on offense Saturday for the first time since Maryland.

• In this third week, Parker is no longer feeling a “whirlwind” of being Purdue’s coach but is more settled, more accustomed to the schedule and media commitments and more comfortable in the staff meetings, he said. He admits a different level of stress with more responsibilities, but this experience also has served to validate his career choice, he said.

“What this all carries does not bother me. I'm not scared of this position,” he said. “I think to have this position now and in the future, wherever it may be, I embrace it because this is what I've been called to do. I am called to do this job, and it's a greater reason than myself. So I could care less about the paycheck or what this means later on. I've just taken a tremendous responsibility to push these men forward to make them better. So it's not as big a whirlwind as I thought it would be because I'm doing something that I want to do in my future.”

Parker won’t be getting an amendment to his contract, but he will get an increase in salary after the change in title, though that figure hasn’t been released yet.

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