6/15/2018 football Edit

Offensive identity pays off again for Purdue with tight end Kyle Bilodeau

Brian Neubert • BoilerUpload

GoldandBlack.com staff

Thanks largely to the prominence the tight end plays in its offense, Purdue has added a commitment from Virginia tight end Kyle Bilodeau, a Rivals.com three-star prospect fresh off an extended unofficial visit to West Lafayette earlier in the week.

The 6-foot-5, 240-pounder from Woodberry Forrest, Va., near Richmond, visited Sunday through Tuesday Purdue earlier in the week and starred at its Monday night prospect camp, which he'd been offered well in advance of.

"(The visit) pretty much just won me over from the start," Bilodeau said. "Coach (Mark) Tommerdahl and Coach (Ryan) Wallace put film up on the screen and laid out their plan to make me into a great player there. Coach (Jeff) Brohm, I've talked to him on many occasions and I know he's a very tight end-oriented coach and he runs the offense. It's good to know that he'll put the right plays in place to make sure we're successful as a team but also to make sure the tight end's always incorporated.

"And Purdue's a very prestigious academic school. I'm looking to go into atmospheric studies, meteorology, and Purdue has like a top-five program there. Academics are first, and knowing I'm going somewhere that's so great academically, with an up-and-coming football program in a major conference, it's great. We're going to be great. We're building a program and I hope I can help build the program into a legitimate Big Ten championship contender."

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Bilodeau chose the Boilermakers over offers from Pitt, North Carolina State and Virginia Tech, among others, as well as persistent interest from Ohio State, where Bilodeau had been scheduled to attend a camp.

"I was there and it felt like the right move," Bilodeau said of his Purdue commitment. "It felt like the right move. I'm not into drawing this whole thing out. I could go to other places ... but to be honest I felt like I found the perfect place already and there's no real reason to go out and get offers just to get offers.

"I'd rather shut my recruitment down and go back to working hard and enjoying the rest of my summer, knowing I'm with a big-time program and I have a great future ahead of me at Purdue."

At Purdue's camp Monday, excelled in particular as a receiver, making a variety of difficult, sometimes acrobatic contested catches.

That's the sort of ability Purdue plans to put to good use.

"They use their tight end all different ways," Bilodeau said following Purdue's camp Monday, "and their history of how they've developed tight ends the past few years. The way Coach (Jeff) Brohm is, there should be tons of trick plays and different ways they like to use the tight end in and names they'll put in the NFL.

"I think they're trending up and up and up with their use of the tight end. It's a real focal point of the offense and it seems as if they'd have a real solid plan for how they'd use me."

He's Purdue's ninth commitment for 2019, first from a tight end, a position where it may need numbers, after signing one in each of the past two classes while its current contributors have all become upperclassmen.

For more on Bilodeau as a player, see the video interview embedded above.

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