The Best Players I Played With: A player's perspective, Charles Davis
Player perspective series: Joe Holland | Chris Clopton | Ryan Kerrigan | Travis Dorsch | Chukky Okobi
"Catching Up" series ($): Akin Ayodele | Matt Light | Bernard Pollard | Brandon Villarreal | Kory Sheets
GoldandBlack.com's 20-year player draft ticker: Nos. 1-61
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 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.
Next up tight end Charles Davis, an all-Big Ten selection in 2004, as told to Stacy Clardie:
"Pound for pound, the best player I probably played with was Dorien Bryant. You’re talking about a guy who was probably 155 pounds soaken wet. He was quick as hell, too. He was tough for a kid who 5-7 on an extra tall day and 155 pounds with probably some 5-pound dumbbells in his pocket. He was very good at not being hit. I caught him at the tail end of my career, but he made a ton of plays for us. A ton.
"Brandon Villarreal did all the dirty work. He was a grinder in there, a little bit undersized but probably one of the tougher guys I had the pleasure to play with.
"The most interesting guy was probably Bernard Pollard. Granted, he was a monster on the field, but in the locker room, if you needed to laugh, he was your guy. Bernard is the funniest guy you’re going to be around in the locker room. I can’t say anything on the record, just the way he acts and the way he goes about doing things in the locker room, he’s pretty funny. I have to keep it as PG (rated) as possible, so we’ll leave it there. It’s hard not to like him. It really is. We had our share of battles. Probably the hardest hits of my life were from him in practice. After practice, he’s the same fun-loving guy. On the field, yeah, you want him on your team.
"You’ve got the silent assassin with Anthony Spencer. I’d put him with Landon Johnson where those guys wouldn’t say more than three words on the field but they’d try to decapitate you every chance they got. That whole linebacking core was kind of ridiculous. You had Landon, you had Gilbert (Gardner), and those guys played receiver in high school and here they are, all-Big Ten linebackers. Then you had Niko (Koutouvides). Landon and Gilbert, they were in that Dorien Bryant mode where they were both, for the most part, tremendously undersized, but you can’t measure a guy’s heart. You had a guy who’s 215 pounds smacking T.J. Duckett. T.J. Duckett looked like he was about 400 pounds of bowling bowl. I’m like, ‘You’re handing this behemoth the football?’ And Landon was just cracking his head all game.
"Kyle (Orton) was probably one of the most cerebral quarterback I think we had. He was not a gifted athlete. He surprised a lot of guys when he ran the ball and actually made some plays. Upstairs, he had it. He basically did everything. I understand that’s the quarterback’s job, but he had it. If you look at him walking around with a dirty T-shirt and some ripped up jeans and dip in his mouth, you’re like, ‘Wait. This is the guy who just killed us?’ He had control of his huddle. He was cool. He had that quarterback kind of edge about him where it’s like, it’s his huddle, it’s his team. Obviously, every quarterback should have something similar to that. He knew when to make the right audibles. He knew what position to put us in to be successful, and he could sling the damn ball. He could let it rip.
"(Taylor Stubblefield) was the quickest, slowest guy you could imagine. His straight-line speed wasn’t there, but the shift and the quickness, he fit our offense perfectly. Obviously, that showed with all the plays I made. I can’t even tell you a time, even in practice, where I remember him dropping a football. The straight-line speed and the size weren’t there, but everything else as far as what you wanted in a receiver, man, he had a lot of it. He loved to talk, too.
"Bobby Iwuchukwu was my roommate. Generic freak of nature is the first thing that comes to mind. The man had more muscles in his baby toe than I probably had in my whole body. He was the guy when you got somebody pissed off, he was probably not the right guy to piss off. But when you got him pissed off and he was on your side, you’re like, ‘OK, let’s go.’ "
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