Purdue expects to 'count on' Alexander Horvath this season
The star of Purdue's spring game at running back, Alexander Horvath was mobilized for a move to defense.
With the Boilermaker roster stacked with options at running back — theoretically, at least, given Purdue's injury fortunes — but razor thin at linebacker this summer, coaches gave the 6-foot-3, 230-pound redshirt freshman a defensive playbook and nudged him toward off-season linebacker drills, to brace for a potential move.
Just in case.
The move never materialized, though, and the issue's off the table now, with the running backs beaten up and linebacker corps slightly fortified.
But the move that never was did underscore the value Purdue clearly sees in Horvath, a player Coach Jeff Brohm said his team will "count on" this season.
What that means exactly remains to be seen, but as of mid-camp, Horvath was Purdue's No. 1 fullback — a modest role in Purdue's normally one-back offense, but an important one when needed — along with being an option for carries this season if the position continues its bizarre run of foul injury luck, or maybe even if it doesn't.
And Horvath is a member right now of virtually every special team.
"Everything but punt block," he said.
In some way, somewhere, Horvath is going to play for Purdue this season, and when he does, it will validate his efforts last season in the face of as stifling a depth-chart outlook as there may have been on the roster.
Even if the freshman from Mishawaka wasn't redshirting, he'd have been buried at a position with multiple starter-caliber players, a running group deep enough to have produced last season three different players who posted hundred-plus-yard games and four who ran for 89 or more in a contest, all of them due to return the following year.
But at one time or another last season, all those players got hurt, and because of it, Purdue was more shallow than deep most of the season.
Still, Horvath wasn't going to play, but he did start doing extra, he says — extra work on pass protection, most notably, whether it was physical work, film study or whatever.
"I think we had nine or 10 backs when we started (camp) last season," Horvath said. "Then they just started going down one by one.
"As Coach always says, 'You have to be ready for your time to step up,' so after practices, I'd do extra work, on off days, I'd do extra work, and watch more film, study more."
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Horvath's time did come in the spring, when he was essentially last man standing while most of his position-mates recovered from surgeries or sat out the unneeded reps in hopes of sidestepping continued problems.
When Horvath's time came, he took nearly a hundred snaps in the Boilermakers' spring game, carried the ball 14 times for 75 yards and caught five passes for 65 more.
Not long thereafter, coaches talked to him about linebacker, looking for a point of entry to the field for the redshirt freshman.
Had Purdue not called at the 11th hour with a preferred walk-on running back offer and won him over at hello, basically, with its engineering program, Horvath would have walked on at Indiana, as a linebacker.
Two years later, Brohm says, Purdue will "count" on Horvath this season in more than one phase of the game, most likely.
"Coming in as a walk-on, more playing time is something that could help me toward a scholarship," Horvath said. "That's what I'm working for.
"I just want to be on the field. I don't care where. I just want to be in the game."
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