Precocious wideouts Carr, Yaseen have impressed quickly
MORE: A healthy Rondale Moore leads a largesse of talent at receiver for Purdue
It’s impossible not to notice Maliq Carr on the practice field.
He’s big. How big? The Purdue roster lists him at 6-5, 225 pounds … but he looks bigger. Carr is a tight end masquerading as a wide receiver. Frightening, huh?
“He’s a big fella,” said Boilermakers receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard. “He even came to me and said, ‘Coach, I’m not even playing football right now because I’m just trying to learn the playbook.' It takes a little bit of time and every once in a while you say, 'OK, he looks more comfortable now, it looks better.' It just depends on the day.”
It’s a process. It is for all players, especially true freshmen who arrive on campus early like Carr.
"Maliq is a big target," said sophomore wideout Milton Wright. "You're probably gonna hear that a lot. But he's a big target. And he's better with his feet than I thought he would be."
The rivals.com four-star recruit from Oak Park (Mich.) could have gone to schools like Georgia, Michigan, LSU, Texas A&M and Notre Dame. But he opted to come to West Lafayette. And he's here early instead of being back home dominating foes on the hoops court and walking the halls of Oak Park High.
"Maliq Carr has great size and strength," said Jeff Brohm. "He can do certain things that you might be able to utilize for sure,"
Carr is one of the latest weapons added to a Purdue receiver room that is without a doubt the most talented in the Purdue football complex. Heck, this set of wideouts may be the school's best collection of talent ever. Really.
“We have a lot of guys out there who are competing,” said Shephard. “It’s great to have those young guys like Abdur Yaseen and Maliq Carr out there competing this spring football.
“I just have to do a good job of making sure we put the pieces in the right places like a jigsaw puzzle.”
It has to be a fun puzzle to try to assemble for Shephard, Purdue's always-in-motion, always-yapping wideouts coach. Another new piece that's being put in place by Shephard is Yaseen, who like Carr is an early enrollee who has had spring football on-lookers agog.
"Yaseen is a very polished player that could contribute this year," said Brohm. "We like what we have seen to this point."
Like Carr, Yaseen is a native of Michigan, hailing from Southfield, Mich. (Walled Lake High). And, like Carr, Yaseen is a big wideout, listed at 6-2, 180. Shephard was persistent and stuck to wooing Yaseen, whose commitment was flipped from Northwestern late in the process.
“Let me be just quite frank with it,” said Shephard. “We didn’t really stick with it til the end. At a point, we were kinda pretty much done recruiting the receiver position. Then, all of sudden, we started to hear rumbles that that (a de-commitment from Northwestern) was gonna occur.
"The fortunate part about it is I had maintained a relationship with his father just because he’s a good guy. He’s a good person to talk to. Has some good sense. He’s very knowledgable about football more than most parents that you really run into. It was always awesome just to talk to him. Because I recruit Detroit, so I’d see him at other places. He’d be there. I’d be like, ‘OK, there he is.’ He’d call me on the phone. I’d talk to him.”
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Yaseen committed on December 18 and signed days later. And Purdue looks like it got a gem to put alongside guys like Rondale Moore, Wright, David Bell, Amad Anderson, Jr., Jackson Anthrop, TJ Sheffield, Jared Sparks and Mershawn Rice.
"(Yaseen's) growth between his junior and senior year, and you see that tape, it's not even close,” said Shephard. “When he came here to visit us and I told him what he needed to do, he did that and more, OK. You watch the film. And you be the judge."
Shephard even has seen glimpes of Moore in Yaseen's play. Yes, Shephard compared Yaseen to Rondale Moore.
"It’s what you see on film, the change of direction," Shephard. "It’s funny when Rondale comes up to me and says he has that zip, zip . And I know what he means. It’s that change of direction, that movement skill that all of sudden it comes out. OK, that looks like stuff I have seen from Rondale before.
"I think in the long run, the kid is gonna have the opportunity to be successful. He’s just gotta learn the playbook. And it’s daunting right now. It’s a task right now. He’s realizing how important that is. He’s pushing through it. When you sit in the room and get on the board, that’s a whole different story than when you come out here and you got a DB lined up against you."
There also is another freshman wideout on campus early: Marcellus Moore. But he is focusing on track. Unlike Carr and Yaseen, Moore is a diminutive target (5-8, 160). But he possesses Olympic-caliber speed.
"He has been out here a few times," said Wright. "He's fast. He's very, very fast. And he's gonna do work for us, as well."
Anthrop has an up-close look at Carr and Yaseen this spring as he sits out recovering from surgery.
"Seeing the amount of guys who have come through over the years, but this is probably right now the most talented that we have ever been," said Anthrop. "It's exciting to be able to see guys like Abdur and Maliq come out and show what they are all about. And just being able to see their growth throughout the spring and seeing them take that throughout the summer and into camp and hopefully they find the ins and outs that you might not see at the beginning. But hopefully they can get that right right before camp."
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