Redshirt Watch: Tracking Purdue’s Freshmen

We all know Purdue is young. In addition to injuries to its few seniors, it is playing a lot of freshmen across the board. That is to be expected with the best recruiting class, top to bottom, in over 15 years arriving this fall. While Purdue might take its lumps this season it can pay off later. Inexperienced freshmen playing this year becomes experienced depth next year. Since we’re already a quarter of the way through the season we have an idea of how many freshmen will avoid the redshirt this year. First is our grid:

The numbers are interesting. Already eight true freshmen (George Karlaftis, Marvin Grant, Brooks Cormier, Cam Allen, King Doerue, Milton Wright, Jalen Graham, and David Bell) have played extensively and will very likely avoid being redshirted. In looking at the participation list from the TCU game (a blowout where any likely playing freshmen would have played late) I don’t see any others that have played. The same is true for Vanderbilt. T.J. Sheffield played briefly against Nevada only, but will still likely redshirt.

Based on previous classes, that is a lot. Last season only three true freshmen avoided a redshirt: Rondale Moore, Jeff Marks, and Jaylan Alexander. The year before that only Cornel Jones and Derrick Barnes did not redshirt. That means Brohm has already played more true freshmen this year than he has in his first two years combined.

There are also a number of redshirt freshmen that have played quite a bit in the first three games. Jack Plummer, Elijah Ball, Will Bramel, Jimmy McKenna, Branson Deen, Jack Sullivan, Amad Anderson, Payne Durham, and Willie Lane have played a lot. Eric Miller, Cory Trice, Lawrence Johnson, and Kadin Smith have also played at least some in the past two games. That’s another 13 freshmen seeing action for a total of 21. Of that 21 only one (Plummer) won’t see a lot of time if Elijah Sindelar returns. That’s 21 freshmen playing when we only have 20 scholarship juniors and seniors available period.

Of course, those upperclassmen are riddled with injury. Of the 20 juniors and seniors we were missing Markus Bailey, Tario Fuller, Matt McCann, Richie Worship, Elijah Sindelar, and Lorenzo Neal on Saturday as seniors and Jared Sparks a junior. That’s 35% of our scholarship upperclassmen that are even on the roster out for a game. Of those seven, we know Bailey is done for the year, Fuller, Worship, and Neal are out indefinitely, and McCann and Sparks are questionable.

There is also the potential more freshmen, true or otherwise, will play. Kyle Bilodeau and Garrett Miller are strong possibilities to play at some point. Steven Faucheux, TJ Sheffield, Mershawn Rice, and Da’Joun Hewitt are all possibilities.

The biggest development that we need going forward is the offensive line. There are four true freshmen sitting in redshirt on the offensive line that need to be getting better every day. Bramel and McKenna are the only redshirt freshmen linemen and both are playing a lot. Mark Stickford and De’Shon Washington are the redshirt sophomore linemen that also need to play. Once again, we can look at those 20 upperclassmen scholarship players and only three are offensive linemen (Criddle, McCann, and Hermanns).

So yes the youth movement will continue, especially up front and at running back where we have no choice. TCU taught Purdue’s young team some hard lessons on Saturday night and they are lessons that will be taught again in the next nine games. The sooner they are learned, the better, and that means 2020 and 2021 could be pretty good.

UPDATE: It occured to me tonight that I should mention something about walk-ons. While walk-ons are great, they are not the first option for many teams because of the investment in scholarship players. It is great when they contribute, but more often than not if you are playing a lot of them it is because some scholarship guys are not coming through. Right now Purdue has a few walk-ons playing regularly, most notably Brennan Thieneman at safety. Danny Carollo has done well as a pooch punter and holder on placements, while Zac Collins made a surprise appearance to punt in place of Cormier on Saturday. Nick Zecchino (long snapper), Marc Roland (offensive line), Sam Garvin (offensive line), Kieren Douglas (linebacker), Alfred Armour (fullback), and Malcolm Dotson (special teams) have seen action as walk-ons. This also does not include Zander Horvath, who is a former walk-on now on scholarship.