Purdue reshuffles running back rotation; Schopper shines; more

More: Special teams coordinator Tony Levine Q&A | Blough frustrated

Analysis ($): Vs.: Do expectations change after Week 1?

The game plan against Louisville was for Markell Jones to be, in essence, Purdue’s top back.

Jeff Brohm said Tuesday Jones was going to get the bulk of the opportunities in the backfield. But, then, Jones got hurt when a Louisville player delivered a helmet to Jones’ right knee on a kickoff return. Jones collapsed, not surprisingly also dropping the ball, and Purdue was forced to adjust without one of its most-talented players.

Chris Barclay said there was initial concern after Jones went down because of the role Jones was expected to play — “he’d been repping quite a bit,” Barclay said — but all the running backs coach could do was tell his guys to take the next-man-up approach. That’ll continue to be the mentality going forward, Barclay said, as Jones is out an undetermined amount of time.

So coaches need to focus on a new plan for Ohio on a short week, with the Boilermakers playing on Friday night. Expect that game plan to include increased roles for primarily Tario Fuller, who started alongside Jones in Week 1 in a split-back set, and D.J. Knox. But Richie Worship and Brian Lankford-Johnson likely will see a bump in snaps, too, likely in varied roles.

“We certainly will miss (Jones) while he’s gone, but this unit is prepared to step up and make plays. I thought we had a really good camp and had a great week of preparation last week. We’ll be fine,” Barclay said. “We’ve got four kids now that we’ll rotate. How much? That’s yet to be determined. … It’ll just be kind of a flow thing.”

Fuller likely will start, Barclay said. Fuller had a team-high eight carries, rushing for 29 yards (3.6 per carry). He caught three passes for three yards. But where he made a real impression on Barclay was without the ball in his hands.

On a third-down play in the fourth quarter, Fuller stonewalled a blitzer up the middle to give Elijah Sindelar extra time to throw. It was one of several nice pick-ups for the sophomore, who tends to play bigger than his size.

“Tario has kind of an innate ability to see and anticipate rotations. There were a couple plays out there that I hadn’t even covered in the meeting room yet, and he found a way to navigate to the guy that he was supposed to get to and pick it up. Fantastic,” Barclay said. “He’s almost advanced placement in some areas as far as picking up the blitzes and things. We’ve just got to get him going in the running game a little bit.”

Knox showed good pop and quickness in his first game in more than a year, after he missed last season while recovering from a torn ACL. He was ecstatic to be back and is eager to get more chances this week to show he can handle more of a load.

In the opener, Knox got only four carries but produced 25 yards. On one carry, he appeared bottled up before popping out of a pile to churn his legs forward for a gain. On another, he showed impressive vision and slipped through a hole up the middle to pick up 13 yards, the longest carry of the game for Purdue.

“I just tried to play assignment-sound football,” Knox said. “I tried to play within my boundaries and get the job done. I play as big a role as the coaches give me. So I didn’t try and do too much. I just tried to get my job done and help my team as best as possible.

“Every opportunity I get, I’m going to try to make the best of it. … I definitely would like to get in there and show the coaches what I can do.”

Knox caught two passes against Louisville, but it’s Lankford-Johnson who could end up with more pass-catching opportunities this week. Both Barclay and Brohm mentioned Lankford-Johnson, the fastest backfield option, as a candidate to slip into Jones’ vacated sometimes-slot role. (A role that didn’t materialize before Jones got hurt but one that was most certainly part of the game plan.)

Worship’s role could be transformed more in Week 2, too. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him on the field as a fullback in two-back sets, something he did only once on Saturday against Louisville. Worship had only one carry against the Cardinals but made the most of his one catch: Evading the first defending and then plowing through two more waiting inside the 5-yard line for a touchdown.

“I knew once Richie got outside and the dude missed him, I said, ‘It’s over with.’ I mean, he’s 255, nobody’s stopping him,” Knox said. “So it was automatically a touchdown in my mind. Hopefully, we get that look again this season, and he punishes somebody else.”

In the run game, too, would be nice.

Purdue backs had only 14 carries in Week 1, and Barclay would appreciate more opportunities for his guys so they "can get their feet in the ground and get some momentum, get excited about it."

The more production the backs have, certainly the more chances they'll get. But Brohm said earlier this week that production isn't all on the backs — the offensive line needs to do a better job of winning the line of scrimmage. Still, Barclay would like to see his players get a chance to show they can contribute on the ground.

"There’s nothing wrong with pass protecting," Barclay said, smiling, "but we’d like to carry the ball every now and again.

"I’d like to see us be more decisive through the line of scrimmage. There are times where we look a little indecisive and we start to check our feet at the line of scrimmage and that’s just not a good thing when you’ve got an offensive line that’s still trying to gel and learn and grow, learning to communicate with each other with the calls. So we’ve really got to just make sure that whenever we make a decision, we’ve got to go with it full speed and have great pad level. I tell the kids, ‘Hey, four yards is a great play.’ You average four yards, you’re going down the field, you don’t have to punt. So anything above and beyond that, we’re excited about. But we want to try and be decisive through the line and create some big plays. We have to create more big plays in the run game." (SC)

Tony Levine would rather Joe Schopper not make any tackles.

It's typically not a good sign when the punter is put in such a position. But on all three situations in which Schopper stared down a Louisville returner who'd broken free last week, the junior made athletic, impressive open-field tackles to save points.

Levine called the individual effort "one of the best I’ve been apart of as a coach."

Schopper, a former high school defensive back, seemed to shrug off such praise Tuesday after practice.

“(If) I’ve got to make the tackle, I’ve got to make the tackle,” he said. “My job in high school was to shoot the gap and gator-roll the running back or whoever had the ball. So that’s not really a foreign concept for me.

“We went back and watched the film and we’re going to fix some things this week with our coverage team. There’s really only two instances where we probably messed up, and they had a good enough returner where he’s going to exploit those. But we’ll get those shored up this week.”

The first tackle came when Purdue opted for an interesting “punt” formation. In that it wasn’t a punt formation. The starting offense was on the field and Schopper was, essentially, the running back in the formation. He was lined up only 8 yards off the line of scrimmage, a huge difference from when he’s actually in punt formation at 15 yards deep. The Boilermakers direct-snapped to Schopper, and he punted. But with slower players on the field — receivers Anthony Mahoungou and Greg Phillips aren’t like having speedster Jarrett Burgess and track runner Malcolm Dotson out there per usual — Louisville broke free for a long return. That Schopper had to make a tackle on near midrange in the open field. On a play that ultimately got dinged for a block in the back.

“We had drilled it in the previous weeks, but it definitely took some getting used to,” Schopper said of the formation. “I had to change up my steps, figure out what was my aiming point, what do I need on this ball to make sure we could cover it, and that ended up not happening. Luckily, it got called back.”

Another tackle came on a head’s up play when Schopper noticed Purdue’s linemen weren’t getting upfield after J.D. Dellinger’s 53-yard field goal was blocked, so Schopper took off and made a shoestring tackle on Jaire Alexander, who was injured on the play. Later, Schopper made another touchdown-saving tackle along the sidelines after a 33-yard return.

He said he’s done tackling drills in practice “here and there,” but he certainly wasn’t planning on having to make any in Week 1. Especially considering he wasn’t credited with a single tackle last season. What he really wants to focus on is punting: And he was pretty good in the opener, averaging 48.6 yards on five punts, despite the other challenges.

“It makes it easier punting indoors. That’s a big game-changer,” he said. “You always enjoy that. But I felt like I was hitting the ball pretty well. I had one that I wish I had back, but overall, I felt pretty strong all night.” (SC)

On back-to-back plays in the third quarter Saturday, Cole Herdman found wide-open opportunities in the middle of the field, advancing the ball deep into Louisville territory to set up a touchdown for his position-mate.

On a second down about five minutes into the half, Herdman lined up as the H-back behind the right tackle, with three receivers to his right. On the snap, he slipped into a soft spot in the Cardinals’ Cover 2 just beyond the line of scrimmage, receiving a short David Blough pass and turning it into a 19-yard gain. On the next snap, he was positioned as the inside receiver on the right side — it was a 2x2 formation — then ran past creeping safety Khane Pass after the snap and made a 13-yard catch before defensive back Zykiesis Cannon could close.

It was part of a solid pass-catching day by Herdman, who repeatedly found advantages in the middle of the field vs. the Cardinals. The junior had four receptions for 59 yards, while fellow tight end Brycen Hopkins added three for 34 and a touchdown. Hopkins was the recipient of the short TD two plays after the Herdman receptions; on that play, Purdue went play action out of an I formation, flowing everyone — the running backs and offensive line — to the left, while leaking Herdman and Hopkins to the right. Both were wide open, and Blough hit the underneath man, Hopkins, for the score.

“They’re the strength of our offense,” Blough said. “We have two really good ones and (freshman Darius) Pittman can be good, too. We’ve got to get those guys the ball as much as we can. Coach (Jeff) Brohm schemes it up a good way to get linebackers to come on down and then we can throw it behind them.”

As effective as Purdue’s tight ends were, they weren’t perfect. Hopkins had a bad second-quarter, third-down drop in Louisville territory, forcing a long field goal attempt that was blocked. And blocking from the tight ends wasn’t great either, forcing Purdue to use Eric Swingler, a reserve tackle, as a blocking tight end for about a half dozen plays.

On Jackson Anthrop’s jet sweep for a first down early in the fourth quarter, for instance, Hopkins glanced off his defensive end, rather than pinning the defender inside. Anthrop still gained the needed yardage, but a better block might have better freed him up for more.

Herdman called blocking, by the tight ends in particular, an overlooked part of Brohm’s offense.

“Everyone wants to talk about his great passing games, but every great passing game starts with a run attack, so getting that started and being physical at the line of scrimmage with those D-ends and linebackers, it’s really going to open up the passing game as well,” he said. “If we can do that, then the offense is just going to go up from there.”

Still, Purdue will take the passing game production from two of its better offensive players.

“Other than Brycen did drop a critical third-down pass, I thought they caught the ball well and I thought the yards after the catch were outstanding,” tight ends coach Tony Levine said. “Were they perfect? No. They can improve, and we talked about some key blocks that they missed that would have got us in the end zone and kept the chains moving at times.

“But I think with how complex our offense is and the fact that they’ve been in it a full spring and summer and just now really training camp and their first game, their knowledge and understanding, really when the ball is snapped — the movement of the defense and the rotation of the coverage and knowing what routes to run and who to block, the leverage they need — is outstanding right now. They’ll only get better, but I was pretty happy with their performance in Game 1.” (KC)

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