Purdue develops resiliency in first year under Jeff Brohm

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When Jeff Brohm did research on Purdue’s team from 2016, the Boilermakers’ sideline demeanor and general inability to finish games, naturally, stuck out.

He noticed how the Boilermakers seemed to retreat, implode, wither — whatever the appropriate not-fight-until-the-end word one would prefer — and he knew it was an immediate area that needed to be addressed in order to change the culture of the program.

Somehow, Brohm had to develop a resiliency and willingness to endure through adversity in his new team.

It’s clear he did: Purdue not only will play in its first bowl game since 2012 after winning the final two games of the regular season to finish 6-6, but it also competed in games consistently throughout the season. The latter was not exactly a characteristic of recent seasons.

In Darrell Hazell’s three-and-a-half-year tenure as head coach, the Boilermakers lost 33 games. The average margin of defeat in those games was 20.7 points. Of those losses, only seven were by 10 points or fewer.

This season, Brohm’s first, Purdue’s six losses were by 7.7 points, including five of the six by 10 points or fewer.

Somehow, he was able to get players to believe that they should — and could — keep pushing and working from beginning until end.

“We didn’t waver at all,” linebacker Markus Bailey said after the finale. “Even the games that we lost, I had full confidence we were going to win the game coming into the game. And we’ve been in every game. Our biggest loss was 18 points to Michigan, and that’s way different than last year. Last year, we got blown out often.”

When asked during Purdue’s bowl press conference Sunday what changed for this team — one that tons of players returning from the old era — current team leaders gave most of the credit to Brohm and his staff.

“I think we really fed off the coaching staff and guys who are leaders in our room,” fifth-year senior Danny Ezechukwu said. “I go all the way back to spring. When they got here, we were going through spring practices in the weight room and with (strength staff) Coach Lovett, Coach Reno and Coach Love and all those guys. Things were different. Everything had a purpose and we knew why we were doing a lot of stuff.

“I feel like we just dug from back there, when we were training in the spring and then the summer workouts and then the fall camp. I think that’s where the resiliency came from (during the season) because the staff came in and implemented that.”

Brohm pointed to kind of a combo credit: Specifically mentioning the senior class and its ability to raise the level of play and then trying to bring on the underclassmen to match that but also gave kudos to his staff for figuring out where those players could best have success.

“I think we all just kind of stuck together, tried to ground the thing out, be as positive as we can when things are tough,” Brohm said Sunday. “Point the finger at ourselves first, always, before we try to fix problems, and I think because of that, we were able to turn the corner. But I am very appreciative to these seniors. They have stuck with it. They didn't have to. They could have not believed in what we were telling them and what we were trying to sell and do, and they have had great attitudes, great work ethics, and I'm extremely happy that they get to advance and play in a bowl game.”

Perhaps that positive approach had something to do with the players’ willingness to continue to work, even when the season, which Brohm called a roller coaster, hit its low points.

The days after games always were spent in identifying and correcting mistakes made on Saturdays, but players have said Brohm’s staff went about that in a matter-of-fact way, not in a degrading manner. And the coaches usually were first to say they could have been better, made better calls, made better rotations, in certain instances, too.

So the coaches would meet, critique themselves and then they’d head to their individual meeting rooms with players and address whatever issues needed to be addressed without malice.

Senior receiver Gregory Phillips said he viewed Brohm’s positivity as keeping players’ heads up and urging them to go back to work “and have some grit about everything that you do.”

“So with us losing those three games back-to-back, it just told us, look, we need to go ahead and prepare even more,” Phillips said Sunday. “We need to go ahead and work even harder. We need to go ahead and be more detailed on everything we do. As far as with the offense, for the receivers, (it was) be detailed in every route that we run. Get the depth — if it’s a 12-yard route, then run the 12-yard route. So I mean, it’s just we had to have some more grit about ourselves and go get what we wanted.”

Brohm said he thoughts his players responded well to the approach, of understanding how small the margin between winning and losing was and how important each detail was to get corrected.

Ultimately, each of those pieces mattered, whether it was a quarterback being a touch more accurate, a receiver being more physical at the line, a defensive back working the proper technique or a linebacker not taking any false steps.

“I think that our guys had a good attitude,” Brohm said. “We had great practices every week, really, whether we won or lost. I felt like we really practiced well and our guys were into it. They were trying to get better and competing. Normally if you just kind of stick with it and just gradually try to improve and not get down on themselves individually, as a unit, you can make progress. I think that we were able to do that.”

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