The Best I Played With: A Purdue player's perspective, Joe Holland

"Catching Up" series ($): Akin Ayodele

GoldandBlack.com's 20-year player draft: Ticker 1-11

GoldandBlack.com staff is making its decisions about Purdue's best players since 1997 with a 20-year player draft that'll run through July.

In conjunction with the draft, we also will check in with former Boilermakers over the next nine weeks to get their perspectives on the best players they played with during their careers. They offer up behind-the-scenes looks at intense work ethics, how players got the most out of their teammates and even reflect on funny stories during their days together.

First up, linebacker Joe Holland, who very well could be selected among the 100-player draft after racking up 324 career tackles and starting 48 games with the Boilermakers from 2008-2012, as told to Stacy Clardie:

"I still talk to Ryan (Kerrigan) every single day. We were roommates all throughout our time at Purdue. He, Danny Dierking, Nick Mondek, Abe Trindle and I, we still talk in a group chat every single day. So I stay pretty up-to-date in what’s going on in Ryan’s life.

"(Kerrigan) was hands down, production alone, that’s all you have to look at to see why I would consider him the best player I ever played with. I think what separates him and what really stood out to me and, I think, everyone who played with him, is just his commitment to being the best was better than anyone I’ve ever been around. He did everything right, on and off the field, in terms of how he approached workouts, in terms of how he approached practice. I remember every Thursday night, we would go to BDubs because they had their 50-cent wing night. Of course, me being undersized and wanting to put on as much weight as I could, I would save up and try to put down 20-25 wings or so. We’d always have to wait on him because he would have to grill chicken that he could eat before because BW3s just wasn’t quite healthy enough for him. He’d still come to the dinners and he’d hang out with us and we’d spend a lot of time there, laughing and everything. But he typically wouldn’t eat because he would have already had his healthier meal. Meanwhile, Dierking, Mondek and I are trying to shove as many wings down our face as we can. (laughs) He was very, very dedicated, not only to bettering himself but to the team. He was just a heck of a teammate.

"(He was) never (impressed with himself). Even now, when he’s having a very productive NFL season, if I text him after he has three sacks against Jacksonville, I feel like all he does is blush. He doesn’t have a whole lot to say.

"I think as a group, we can take a little bit of credit for him having a sack dance. We didn’t pick the dance he does, but it was Abe Trindle that was like, ‘Ryan, you get enough sacks regularly to have a dance, to have some sort of signature celebration.’ I think he made a good decision with his HBK.

"A guy that probably won’t get mentioned as much because of injuries, but when he was healthy, I thought Ralph Bolden was as good as they come. And he did it kind of quietly. He didn’t get a ton of attention. He was the starting tailback and he was very productive, but he had some of his best games against some of our best opponents. To see what he was able to do against Oregon in ’09, he regularly scored on Ohio State. He was a guy who flew under the radar, if you’re talking about the best guys I played with, but he definitely always stood out to me. He was quiet, relatively reserved, so he didn’t make a big splash in terms of probably talking to (the media), but he worked hard every day. It’s one of those things, you wish a guy like that could have stayed healthy and seen what he could have done over a four-year career.

"Dustin Keller was only there the year that I redshirted. He was one of the first guys I saw in the locker room and then in the weight room on the first week. Ryan and I went up there a little earlier than the rest of the guys because of our location. (Holland is from Indianapolis, Kerrigan from Muncie.) So we went up there at the beginning of the summer, and I remember seeing Dustin, and I want to say he was hang-cleaning close to 170 kilos (375 pounds). I remember thinking, ‘Am I supposed to be able to do that at any point in my career? Is this really a guy I’m expected to guard?’ Because he was one of the only guys I saw. I said, ‘If every guy is like this, I might need to reconsider.’ Fortunately for me, he was one of kind. Not everyone was like him. But you just talk about, again, a guy that I think would still be having a really productive NFL career if it wasn’t for that injury. But certainly dominated every single game he played in college, that’s for sure.

"I played with (Kawann Short) for four years. He was kind of interesting in that he dominated games, but at his position, sometimes you knew the games he really dominated, but sometimes you couldn’t tell that he did. You maybe look and see that Dwayne Beckford or myself had a really, really good game statistically, but a lot of times that just meant KK was beating everybody up up front. It’s kind of sometimes an unsung position. He certainly made a splash at that position, and he had his name called plenty of times, but he was a guy that I think everyone knew was so good, so athletic, particularly my senior year, his junior year, and then his senior year, he was making play after play. But even early in his career, he kind of did it quietly. He and Mike Neal — Mike Neal is another guy I could mention — really did a great job keeping guys off us and letting us make plays. When we were making plays, it was almost always because KK and Mike were doing their job so well."

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