Purdue secondary comes out 'aggressive' on Day 1

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Coordinator Ross Els came out of the spring feeling like his secondary — and he individually coaches the safeties — wasn’t aggressive enough.

They weren’t physical, didn’t disrupt enough passes, didn’t intercept them frequently and were too often beaten.

Well, give them a comeback victory on Day 1 of training camp, when the defense had seven pass breakups, including an interception, during a 26-play 11-on-11 period at the end of practice. Plus, it had multiple other PBUs and two more picks in perimeter drills, certainly getting the best of the passing offense.

Els, the first-year defensive coordinator, felt the secondary lacked that ability in the spring.

“Maybe we weren’t as aggressive enough in our match coverage, a little bit scared,” he said of a coverage in which Purdue personnel will match up into a man scheme. “They’re going to throw the ball deep and we have to make a play on a deep ball, but I just hate when can dink the ball all the way down the field. We have to challenge those routes and that’s probably the one thing that as a total team we needed to fix.”

It’s only a day, but a good one nonetheless, particularly considering the number of new faces in the secondary. Its second-team defensive backfield, for instance, included two freshmen, a J.C. transfer, a walk-on and a former wide receiver. The 3s included a couple more rookies.

But safety C.J. Parker, a J.C. transfer who lined up with the second-team on Thursday, says the new and old have bonded quickly because of a shared goal.

“We want to prove that we’re all winners,” he said. “We’re not worried about first(-team), second- or third- or proving ourselves because we’re new. We’re worried about making sure we give everything to our brothers.”

Purdue might be helped because it is more settled in the back half of its defense. In the spring, Els spent time, all 15 practices including the spring game, mixing and matching the units. He’d shuffle guys in at cornerback, then rotate them inside to nickel, sometimes within the same series.

He’s not doing that now. On the first day of practice, he had four separated out as nickel backs, including projected starter Brandon Roberts and reserve Antonio Blackmon, the latter of whom had the 11-on-11 interception. The cornerbacks were cornerbacks; the safeties were safeties.

More definition could equal more results.

“In the spring, it was (about) who can play what,” Els said. “And we were rolling guys in and out, playing different positions, corners, nickels, dimes, safeties, just moving and finding the right match. That was one of our goals coming out of the spring, to get more well-defined roles, and we think we’ve done that. We’ll see after we get the pads on.”

The Boilermakers will be challenged to keep it up. Els estimated that about 90-percent of his coverages end up in some sort of man, whether it be a straight-up man defense or a kind of match-up zone, where a player might take an area, then latch on when an opponent comes near.

And that scheme can mean a lot of pressure.

“If we’re going to lock up and play a lot of tight man coverage, we need to be more aggressive and challenge routes better, so we’ve been working on it over the summer,” Els said. “I think they responded; we’ll see when we take a look at the practice film.”

There’s likely to be bumps, particularly for newcomers. Purdue is going to install Els’ scheme much quicker now than it did in the spring, when it was able to take a step-by-step approach. But that was the second look — Purdue had taken a first in the winter — and the Boilermakers reviewed for a third time over the summer.

“Offense can put whatever they want to put in and we’re a lot faster than what we have been,” Els said. “Because this is our fourth time through it. … We should have a good idea of what we’re doing and we should be able to get things in quicker.”

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