Gerad Parker spent last week shaking up Purdue’s schedule, changing approaches to practice, shifting travel routines, working on improving the players’ “mentality,” specifically with a focus on getting them to believe in the importance of effort and playing with passion and in understanding they’re worthy of success.
All those tweaks showed up Saturday through inspired play in Parker’s first game as interim head coach. The Boilermakers lost at No. 8 Nebraska, 27-14, but they led at halftime and generally showcased high energy and effort throughout the game.
That performance did not go unnoticed.
Parker got a call from his former coach Rich Brooks, the guy who recruited him to Kentucky and later hired him as a graduate assistant. That call, maybe, was expected, considering Parker’s previous relationship. But another call he got on Monday? Not so much.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney spent nearly a half hour on the phone with Parker, offering advice on how to handle the interim situation and, apparently, offering praise on how Purdue’s players responded with fight against the Cornhuskers. Swinney told Parker he watched some of Purdue’s game and was impressed.
“He watched how hard we played, and for him to reach out and do that in a busy time for him and spend 26 minutes to talk about the process for what he had to go through and all those things shows you why Clemson is where they are and why his guys believe in where he’s at,” Parker said Tuesday during his weekly press conference. “They do. After talking to him for 26 minutes, I can tell you there is no accident.”
But Swinney’s call carried weight not only because he’s coaching the third-ranked team in the country and his Tigers have yet to lose a game this season, but he also has experienced the same situation as Parker. In October 2008, Swinney replaced Tommy Bowden as Clemson’s interim coach in the middle of the season and, ultimately, led the Tigers to a 4-2 record that year. Following that season, Swinney was named head coach.
“There’s a lot of things he said (to do) that we’ve done. You check them off,” Parker said. “There’s some other things, little stuff, but more about how he’s done it and the belief he’s had to change around there. A lot of it is unbelievably about the mental approach that we started on last week that we have to continue to (work on) and, then, (players) help, too. It’s a personnel-driven game, too. The pieces we changed were kind of right on track and that was good to know. I didn’t have to go back and be like, ‘Oh, no. I missed the ball.’ ”
Though Parker was proud of the step the Boilermakers took in competing and attitude — and thinks fans can be proud of the team’s approach, too — he knows that’s not enough.
Purdue (3-4, 1-3 Big Ten) would like to continue to compete and not suffer its roller coaster of the last three-plus seasons of playing well only to follow such a performance with a dud. But that'll be a considerable task this week: The Boilermakers host No. 24 Penn State, which is coming off a victory against then-No. 2 Ohio State.
Still, the goal is the same.
“It’s a win. There's no doubt about that,” Parker said of the team’s next step. “We have to expect and believe that good things are going to happen. You have to. Our fans have to. Our administration has to. I have to. The staff has to. My wife has to. Everybody has to expect good things to happen. If you don’t, they’re not going to. That means we have to win football games here. Everybody wants to, so that looks like us talking about winning football games and finishing football games. Believing we’re going to do those instead of hoping.
“Nobody is going to hold themselves more accountable for the product we put on the field Saturday than I will. I feel that with every piece of my being that how we play Saturday is a direct reflection of my responsibilities as now the head coach to make sure our football team runs around and has more passion than anybody else on the field.”
Parker will continue to preach the point about football being an emotional game and that his players must play like that all the time. There can’t be any emotional letdown, he said, because such a thing should not exist.
He’ll keep pushing the message of changing the team’s mental approach, and that includes being dedicated to preparation and not allowing failure to taint the next week’s approach. Too often, he said, when hard work doesn’t pay off in a victory, players can decide that they won’t work that hard again. Instead, he wants his guys to “double up” with more effort.
“Everybody wants instant results,” he said. “In our society, that’s what you say. If you play, you deserve a reward. Well, it’s not like that. If you don’t win, that means you’ve got to do it all the same way you did it and better and you’re still not guaranteed it. But if you don’t do it the other way, you’re going to give a poor effort and you’re going to get beat bad and you’re not going to feel good about anything. So for our guys it’s understanding, hey, we’re closer to it, and now you’ve just got to double up. We’ve got to move faster today in our practice. Have to study more, do all things better and buy in better to get us to a point where we are then going to see some of those rewards and that’s why they keep going.”
Certainly Purdue needs to execute better, too, to have different outcomes.
The offense had only 94 yards and was shut out in the second half against Nebraska. The defense allowed three consecutive scoring drives in the second half that include two 20-plus-yard touchdowns that help the Cornhuskers take the lead and pull away.
"We kind of lost some steam and didn't find a way to finish the football game. We've got to find a way to do that," Parker said.
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