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Dan Rowe needed time to think.

Even though Rowe respected and appreciated the leadership and knowledge of Jeff Brohm and Nick Holt, whom he worked for as a graduate assistant at Western Kentucky for two years, Rowe's experience at Washington State had been a good one. In his one year there as a GA with the nickels in 2016, Rowe was able to work alongside Alex Grinch, a friend and coach he’d worked with at New Hampshire nearly 10 years ago.

So when Brohm called Rowe to ask if he’d join Purdue’s staff as defensive quality control, Rowe didn’t immediately say yes. He’d enjoyed his first Power 5 experience at Washington State — his previous GA stops were at Yale, Wyoming, Northern Michigan and WKU — and, because his goal is to ultimately be a coach, he appreciated being able to have that direct access to players. An analyst role is more behind the scenes and does not allow on-field coaching.

In the end, though, Rowe couldn’t say no to two coaches who’d treated him so well — and still have so much more to offer a young professional in the business.

“When you work for a guy like Coach Brohm, there’s definitely a lot more development in the coaching staff and you’re around a lot more, I hate to say it this way, but good football,” Rowe said Thursday. “There’s a lot of really dynamic stuff that you see every day on the football field. That’s no knock against Washington State. But I really enjoy seeing all of the different stuff going on. ‘All right, you give us all these formations and motions and trick plays,’ and we have so many defenses in, so you really get to see everything against everything. That to me, that’s how my mind works. I want to see it all, I want to see what adjustments you can make to all the different stuff. I think that helps my development more than maybe any other style of football. That’s kind of the main reason I would say. Then I really do believe in Coach Brohm. It’s one of those things, if I have an opportunity to help him come into a situation that’s definitely going to be challenging, he’s a great person and he’s been great to me, so I definitely want to help him as much as I can.”

For the first two months on the job that meant Rowe was breaking down film of Purdue’s defense, analyzing which defenses seemed to fit the personnel the best and which ones players were most efficient in, as well as evaluating players’ abilities and charting who is more effective in certain roles. Analyzing film is a large part of the job, though it’ll shift some this summer toward looking at upcoming opponents’ offenses to try to see where Purdue’s defense can best take advantage.

Though Rowe spent one year working with offensive linemen at Northern Michigan, most of his experience as a GA has been with defense. He played only one year of football in high school before injuring a knee and didn’t play at New Hampshire, but that one season was spent as a defensive lineman and he quickly realized he wanted to coach and he wanted to coach defense.

“It’s always been my mentality. It’s the attacking style, the aggressiveness. You can’t be fake and be good on defense,” Rowe said. “There’s no real hiding. It’s really hard to hide a guy if he’s not physical. Or it’s really hard to hide a guy if he doesn’t have the guts you need to be successful. That’s my whole thing. I loved my one year on offense. I used to draw stuff up on the board, and we’d run that play and it’d be a touchdown, and I’m like, ‘This is the best thing ever.’ But I was like, ‘Let the other guys do that and I’ll work on the stuff that’s really hard,’ in my opinion, and that’s the defense.”

Working with Holt has increased Rowe’s knowledge, he said, and working against Brohm has done the same, too.

Even in Purdue’s 15 spring practices in both systems for the first time, it was clear to see the constant chess match between the two coaches and sides, Brohm as the play-caller on offense and Holt as the defensive play-caller.

Both coaches spent the spring loading up on installation, adding more and more plays, formations, shifts, motions, coverages, fronts and blitzes. Then lined up against each other to see how the other would respond.

It was a fruitful environment.

It also was one that helped produce answers coming out of the spring, and as a person who’s evaluated every player on the defense, some guys stuck out to Rowe as ones who can be especially utilized in Holt’s system.

Rowe said he liked how safety T.J. Jallow, a transfer in his first spring with the program, could be moved around, dropping him into the box or then matching him up to suit his strengths in man coverage by putting him on the right people (tight ends). Because of his athletic skill set and his size, Jallow could be a player who’s used in the blitz packages, too, Rowe said.

Rowe said Purdue does enough in rolling down its safeties to keep starting linebacker Markus Bailey “where he’s really good — in the box.” Rowe liked how Bailey read runs and was physical this spring and thinks he’s a player the defense can be built around.

“I think we can really put good playmakers in the right situations to be successful,” Rowe said. “I think it’s really promising. I think our defense from the day we put it in until now is a lot better. We’ve still got a long way to go. The improvement is a really positive thing.”

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