Purdue honors seniors at football banquet

Typically, Purdue's MVPs are revealed at its postseason banquet.

But the Boilermakers still have one game to play, accepting an invite to the Foster Farms Bowl on Dec. 27, and those performances will factor into the awards, chief of staff Greg Brohm announced during the annual banquet Sunday.

So the suspense of just which players will nab the offensive and defensive most valuable player awards — there are a bevy of candidates from the defensive unit especially — will continue until the spring game in April. The plan is to reveal those awardwinners, and potential other awards, at the halftime of that game.

Without those major awards Sunday, the banquet focused mostly on recapping the turnaround first season under Coach Jeff Brohm and the key roles so many of the senior class played in it, finishing the regular season 6-6 by regaining the Old Oaken Bucket and securing a bowl bid.

"When we took this job, one of the things we wanted to make sure of, and it's just kind of my mentality and our coaching staff's mentality, is we wanted to win now," Brohm said during the banquet. "A lot of teams like to build and all that, and while that's important as well, it's important to win now. We've got a lot of seniors on this football team who did a tremendous job. They're outstanding players, they've worked extremely hard throughout their career, and we owed it to them to elevate our performance, evaluate our coaching ability to help those guys win, go out in a winning fashion.

"But very thankful for the seniors. They've been the rock of this football team all year long. I know our younger guys look up to them. They've fought through a lot of hard adversity throughout their career, and it's important we continue to send them out a winner — and that's by going to win this football game on Dec. 27."

Several seniors won awards that were handed out Sunday.

Three-time captain Ja'Whaun Bentley was the receipient for the Guy "Red" Mackey Award, which is presented to the athlete that exemplifies overall success. Anthony Mahoungou won the Leonard Wilson Award, given to the player that exemplifies unselfishness and dedication. Danny Ezechukwu was one of four players who earned the "Pop" Doan Award for best performance against Indiana.

Markell Jones, Markus Bailey and Joe Schopper also were Doan winners, and junior David Blough was the Kiwanis Citizenship Award winner for a player who has demonstrated excellence in role as student, athlete and in the community.

The Boilermakers practiced Friday and Saturday for the first time since their regular-season finale.

"It was kind of just getting back in the flow," Brohm said after the banquet. "I wanted to give our guys time off to A, get healthy as they can and kind of refresh their mind and body and, really, I wanted them hungry when they get back. They’ve practiced a lot of football. This was really just two practices to get back into the flow, introduce our next opponent and really they’ve got another break for finals and then we’ll start to crank up a little bit more after that."

Purdue focused on fundamentals and drills but also mixed in some Arizona prep with its scout teams. It'll take the same kind of approach when it returns to the practice field next week. Purdue will have Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off for finals before getting back to the field Thursday.

Coaches are balancing being on the road recruiting with trying to form a game plan for Arizona. Brohm said coaches have been watching film while on the road, but they'll come together starting, likely, Dec. 18 to have a larger group meeting and try to hammer out key details. By the middle of that week, Brohm hopes to have the game plan in place. The team leaves for California on Dec. 23.

"We’ll use the majority of the practices. But we’re not going to use all 15," Brohm said. "I think we’re going to be smart with it. We do need guys to get back in the flow. I thought we did make progress at the end, so I don’t want to lose the work ethic we had or the small things we were working on, but I want to gradually ease back into it. At the end of every practice, we need to spend quite a bit of time with the young guys and make sure they’re getting quality look in drills, in repetitions and even in team settings to give them a taste of what it’s going to be like come spring ball."

• Purdue will add a full-time assistant after the new year, and, though Brohm has options in mind, he'll start the search in earnest after the bowl game.

The position can start on Jan. 9, Brohm said.

"There’s obviously multiple candidates that I think I have, it’s just a matter of trying to do the right thing and get the right fit," Brohm said of the 10th assistant. "It’s probably going to be a defensive hire. This time of the year, up until convention time, there’s always going to be movement and people (changing). I don’t like to move too soon because things could happen here, and you want to make sure you have the right mix. So I’m a little probably slower on that than some of the others."

• There are a handful of players who were going to have surgeries after the season, Brohm had said late in the year. With the season extended, those players are going to hold off until after the bowl, Brohm said.

Purdue already has had several players have season-ending surgeries, including to address ACL injuries (left tackle Grant Hermanns, running back Richie Worship, DT Keiwan Jones).

• The entire roster of eligible players will travel to the bowl game, including walk-ons, Brohm said.

There are a couple players whose eligibility will hinge on next week's finals, though. Brohm said Purdue won't find out about those players until "the last minute."

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