Q&A: Special teams coordinator, tight ends coach Tony Levine

More assistant coach Q&As: Brian Brohm | Nick Holt

More: 2017 primer

After Friday's practice, Tony Levine took a moment to flip through the printed-out practice plan and hold up a specific page that related to Purdue's special teams, of which he's coordinator.

The diagram showed where every player should be lined up, their assignments and, near the sideline had a black square. The square indicated where the managers where to place a cone in the drill.

If the square was just a shade off after he got the print out back, he'd redo it. If the cone was just a shade off, he let people know.

Levine is a stickler for details. And it's one reason former players praised him as a high-level special teams coach. His current Purdue players are realizing it quickly, too, whether it's kicker J.D. Dellinger or tight ends Cole Herdman and Brycen Hopkins, who are under Levine's tutelage in his position coach job.

More from Levine, a former head coach at Houston, who spoke with reporters for the first time after Friday's practice, the first padded one of the spring:

GoldandBlack.com: One of the guys who played for you at Western Kentucky called you a ‘mastermind’ when it comes to special teams. What makes you that?

Levine: (laughs) "I don’t know if I’m a mastermind. I’ve been doing it a long time. I’ve studied it quite a bit. Early in my coaching career, I worked for someone who said, ‘You need to become an expert at your field, an expert at your position if you’re a player.’ I took that to heart early. That’s what I try to do in my coaching. One thing that we will do in the kicking game is my personality lends me a little bit to be outside the box. We’ll do things that are unconventional but not without there being thought put into it, certainly. We anticipate and expect them to be successful. The thing Coach (Jeff) Brohm and I talk about all the time is just because, well, no one has ever done this before — and I’ve been on staffs as an assistant where I’ve said, ‘Hey, I want to try this.’ (The response is), ‘Well, who have you seen do that?’ ‘Nobody.’ ‘Well, no, no, we’re not going to do that.’ Here, we’re going to do that. So we’ve had a lot of success doing it. Last season at Western Kentucky, our kickoff returner set an NCAA record averaging over 40 yards per return. Our kickoff returner at Houston holds the NCAA record for kickoff return touchdowns with seven. So we’ve done some creative things. Punting the football, kickoffs, we’ll do some creative things there. Field goal, we’ll do some. So there will be some things I think that the people watching us will say, ‘I’ve never seen that before.’ Among everything else, I think it makes it fun for the players."

GoldandBlack.com: Who says, ‘I want to be a great special teams coach’ — how do you evolve into that?

Levine: "In the coaching profession, what I’ve come to find and what I think people would agree with, is not a lot of people really know the kicking game. Not a lot of people really, truly know special teams. Early in my coaching career, I had some veteran coaches say if you can learn special teams, that can give you an advantage and can maybe open up some doors professionally along the way you may not have had open otherwise. I was a graduate assistant for five years total at two different programs and when I got to Auburn, Tommy Tuberville was the head coach and a guy named Eddie Gran was our running back coach and new special teams coordinator at the time. I went in and said, ‘Coach Gran, if there’s anything I can help you with, I’d love to be involved.’ For that two years at Auburn, I worked extremely close with Coach Gran and then that’s when I got a chance to interview at Louisiana Tech and was hired there as my first special teams coordinator job.

"From there went to Louisville and then probably — I hate to use the word 'break' — but maybe my biggest break in terms of coaching special teams came after three years at Louisville, I went to the Carolina Panthers as an assistant special teams coach for two years. In the NFL, there’s no recruiting. There’s really no monitoring your current players. They’re not going to class. They’re just professional football players. And I wasn’t coaching tight ends. I wasn’t coaching outside linebackers. I’m just coaching special teams. So you’ve got from 5:30 in the morning until midnight of just kickoff coverage, punt return. That’s it. So those two years I really grew as a coach and was really able to study some of the best on the planet in terms of what they do with the kicking game. From there is when I went to the University of Houston and brought what I’d learned and put my own kind of spin of what I’d learned there and had some success."

Q: Purdue hasn’t had a dedicated special teams coordinator here in awhile. Have you already seen ways where you can have an influence with any of the specialists they weren’t getting before?

Levine: "I’d like to think so. When I first got here, you’d like to come into a program new. The cliché is everybody has got a clean slate (but it’s), ‘Tell me about this kid.’ Kind of speak out of both sides of your mouth. In fairness, I looked at the stats, but I wanted to put the tape on. From the moment I watched, for instance, the field goal from last season, I immediately when I met with the young man, I didn’t really say we’re going to change this because there’s going to be change with a new staff, but here is how we’re going to do a field goal operation. Here’s some things on video, Joe Schopper is the holder, that we need to tweak a little bit because it’ll help our kicker. We made those changes literally, I think I still had jetlag — well, actually, I drove here, so I didn’t fly — but I had just gotten here, saw some things and we made those changes. The players would have to tell you, but I think some of the subtle things we’ve made already are going to help them. My job description, the kicking game, if the ball is being kicked, I’m coaching it. So I will coach field goal block, punt safe, hands team, onside kick team, field goal. A lot of places — and we’re a little different probably in that respect — the vast majority of special teams coordinators nationally and you talk to them, and you say, ‘You’re the coordinator at the program, what do you coach?’ (They’ll say), ‘I coach the big four, punt, punt return, kickoff cover, kickoff return.’ Whereas if the ball is kicked, I’m going to be coaching it."

Q: What have you seen from the returns so far?

Levine: "Nothing. You’re saying in person? So far, this first week, the first three practices, for me has been kind of a two-part evaluation. (No.) 1, the specific kickoff cover drills we’ve done, which we’ve done three different ones so far and then just watching our offense and defense on video. So I’m evaluating the entire football team. (This) week we’ll continue with kickoff cover and then we’ll add punt to the mix. I just don’t think it’s not fair to them and I certainly can’t do it coming in Day 1, ‘Here’s our punt team.’ I’ve got to get to know who the guys are. Punt is more schematic. Kickoff cover is more let’s do some drills and see if this guy is an L3 or an R5. I’m starting to see more this guy will be on the kick side, this guy will be more of a field-side cover player. After spring break is when we’ll get into kickoff return. Part of my evaluation there is kind of watching some of the guys offensively with the football and how they move and how they handle the ball. We have special teams depth charts posted in the building and in the locker room and right now the field goal team is up, and the kickoff cover team is up — not specific — because we’re four-deep there for the drill work and that’ll start being narrowed down in the next two weeks. Starting (this) week, the punt will be filled in. After spring break, I’m going to start looking at the returners. But I don’t know how their competition is on other positions on our team, but the kickoff returner position and punt returner is as wide as open as anything at this point."

GoldandBlack.com: Couple of the Western Kentucky guys were talking about your attention to detail. I heard you needed a printer in your office here because you print out a lot of stuff and give guys' copies.

Levine: "That’s correct. I print out everything and I give it to the players, and if there’s — this is just the way I am here — the diagrams I give out are drawn to detail. Two things I have a pet peeve on. (No.) 1 is actually the phrase pet peeve so I rarely use that phrase. (No.) 2 is I want things drawn to scale. I meet with the managers and I’ll show them this diagram. ..."

Q: I guess that’s how you set records, attention to detail.

Levine: "I hope so. The kids don’t know this here this year yet, but when we will have a kickoff return meeting in the fall, I will walk in certain weeks and saying, ‘I am handing you a touchdown. Here’s what they are going to do, and here’s what we are going to do.’ I bat pretty good on that. It’s not every week. Some weeks, it’s here’s what we’ve got to do and we have a double team here and this guy will be free and the returner may have to make him miss. I’m not trying to get ahead of myself, but I’ll come in and say, ‘Here is exactly how I want this blocked.’ We’ll have walkthroughs pre-practice. We’ll have walkthroughs game day. We will coach the scout kickoff cover team, they’ll be in the meeting, they’ll watch the video, and this is exactly how I want their L5 to play this double team. This is exactly how I want R3 to fit the wedge in practice because this is how our opponent will fit it Saturday. Even to the body types. So if their R3 is a linebacker type, our scout team R3 will be a bigger guy. Yes, we’re going to be detailed."

GoldandBlack.com: I spoke with Bob DeBesse, and he mentioned he suggested an apartment at the funeral home when you were at Southwest Texas State. How’d that go?

Levine: "It went great. (laughs) It went great. It was for sure the most quiet neighbors I’ve ever had. The rent was low. I didn’t have a car either, so it was about a mile from campus, so I’d walk to the office in the morning, walk home at night. I was 23 years old, San Marcus Texas, it used to be called Southwest Texas State. I had a great experience there. He gave me my first college coaching job. When I played receiver at the University of Minnesota, Kevin Sumlin was the receiver coach, Bob DeBesse was the offensive coordinator. Coach DeBesse became the head coach at Southwest Texas and gave me my first graduate assistant job down there for three years."

GoldandBlack.com: How many times have you told the story about catching a touchdown in Ross-Ade Stadium?

Levine: "Since I’ve been here?"

GoldandBlack.com: Yeah.

Levine: "Oh, a dozen. At least. I’ve got the picture in my office. But we lost, which is obviously a good thing now. I mentioned it at the signing day deal, we held Mike Alstott on 25 carries to only 183 yards and four touchdowns."

Q: Can you tell it one more time?

Levine: "The thing I will say, just to preface it, is Coach Brohm continues to get the stats wrong. It was nine catches, and he keeps saying six. Obviously, he wasn’t there at the time. But it was nine catches, 116 yards and a touchdown. We had trouble that day, for some reason, tackling Mike Alstott. So the final was 49-37. Purdue did take a safety at the end of the game intentionally to give us two more points. That was my junior year, Oct. 8, 1994. It was here in Ross-Ade. I was a part of that game. The year before that, in Minnesota, this was the highest — I hate to bring this up, I don’t know why I’m bringing it up — but it was the highest score at the time by a team that lost a game. Minnesota actually won 59-56 the year before in Minneapolis.

"(The touchdown) was a corner route in the end zone, and I don’t know the defensive back who is in the picture with me, but I do have it in my office. My dad framed it and sent it to me."

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