D Coordinator Scherer talks strategy

New Purdue coach Barry Odom and defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Mike Scherer have a long history together.

Scherer spent the last two years as defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at UNLV under Odom. In 2024, Scherer helped the Rebels finish among the top 30 nationally in points allowed per game.

Scherer, 31, began his career at Missouri as a GA in 2019 when Odom was head coach (2016-19) and worked at Arkansas from 2020-22 as a linebackers coach under Odom, who was the Razorbacks’ defensive coordinator at the time. Scherer played for Odom at Missouri as a linebacker from 2012-16.

As Purdue heads to the start of spring practice on March 4, Scherer discussed a variety of topics. Here are five questions with him.

Q: What was the key to turning around UNLV?

A: I think the players bought into working hard and playing hard. They had had some seasons and weren’t so good before we got there. If you want to be different, then we got to do some different stuff. And it starts with putting in work and really buying into working hard. Because, it can go one way or another when you first get to a place and you really want to push guys. And they took it the right way, took it to heart. And it just kind of carried over into football, and just became who they were.

They worked hard, they played hard. And that was our DNA over there, and they took pride in it. All of it was based around them. The players play the game, and they just bought into, ‘Hey, if we do this work, it’s going to be really hard, but you’re going to win.’ And when they learn that that was the key to winning, it only grew from there.

Q: Can you describe your scheme?

A: That’s a really hard question to answer, mainly because we’re trying to figure out who our players are. The players are the most important part of every scheme. You got to figure out what they can do. It doesn’t matter what I know. It matters what they can do. That’s part of it. We’re still learning everybody.

But I can also tell you that if you’re a traditional person, you think of schemes as a 4-2, a 3-4 or a 3-3. We’re going to do all of them. And there are times on one single snap we could do them all. If you look at our past, at Missouri, it was a 4-2. At Arkansas, it was 3-2, 3-3, at times. And then at UNLV, we did a little bit of all of it.

You go back to Missouri before when Odom was there, we did some of that stuff, as well. And that was more of a 3-4 scheme. But what you do is you build it around your players, and you build it at what they can do best, and everything from there becomes, I want to say, window dressing. What kind of defensive line we put out there, what kind of alignment they start in will change all the time, and it may change in the middle of a snap while the quarterback is calling the cadence. So, we’re going to be very, very multiple, but rely on our players and their skills and their talents.

Q: As a young coordinator, how valuable is it to have Odom around?

A: We’ve been together for quite some time. He recruited me when I was in high school (St. Louis MICDS), coached me when I was in college, so a lot of familiarity. Through those years, when he’s your boss, you learn what he likes and what he wants and how he thinks. I think through those years, we think a lot alike. And so with that, he lets me be me, and he lets me do our thing, and he doesn’t come in there and doesn’t try to do too much. He’s the head coach, and he trusts us, and lets us do our job.

There are times when I’m sitting there for a game, for game week, early in the morning, and I know there’s something we did back in 2015 when he was coaching me. And I’ll call him up and I’ll say, ‘Hey, you remember this?’ And he said, ‘I was just thinking about the exact same thing.’ So, I do call him. I rely on him for things like that. I got his playbook from 2015 that we ran in the corner of the room, and I dig into it quite often. He lets us do our thing on defense, and he doesn’t get in our way.

Q: How important is the pass rush?

A: Pass rush is huge, affecting the other team’s quarterback is the name of the game. Quarterback has got the ball in his hands every play, OK? Offense coordinators can draw up the greatest plays ever. But if the guy with the ball in his hands is flustered by stretching the imagination, or doesn’t exactly know what he’s looking at, then, as a defense, we’re probably going to be successful. So, rushing that quarterback is very important. But a lot of that, again, goes back to the players.

We added CJ (Nunnally) (Akron transfer). We had C.J. Madden, who’s already here, who I think is a very talented player. We’re going to figure out who can rush. To me, it’s about the players. Can we set up whoever we think is our best guy, or our best two guys? Can we set those guys up to have success? Can we set them up to be in a position to be able to get to the quarterback and not have two, three guys blocking them on their way? So, part of that is on your scheme and but it’s finding which players you can do that for. Yes, it’s about the players, but if you don’t have the right scheme to be able to get them to rush free, to be able to get them to play fast, then sometimes their talents don’t get shown.

Q: How would players describe you as a coach?

A: I guess it depends on the scenery around and by that, I mean, are you on the grass, in the room? Are you just at the house hanging out? I expect a lot of them, I demand a lot out of them, but I think they all understand that it’s because I want them to be good. I try and keep myself out of everything. I played before, my playing career is over. My time to shine is over. It’s their time to shine. I think if you can understand that and get them to know that you believe that and that you care about them, it’s about them, it’s not about you. You have the ability to push them.

So, if we were in a meeting room sitting around, hanging out, I like to talk ball and shoot it like everybody else. But, when it’s on the field, I’m pretty demanding, but it’s all under the premise of if you want to be good, if you want to win, if you want to be happy on Saturday, we’re going to go through it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in order for you to get to that Saturday and be happy at that Saturday, and I think there’s an appreciation at the end of it.

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