Takeaways: New football coach Barry Odom's introduction at Purdue

Tuesday morning, bright and early, Purdue introduced new Boilermaker football coach Barry Odom to the media, as well as the few-hundred fans who came to Mackey Arena for the occasions.

A few thoughts and impressions on Purdue’s new coach.

NO FRILLS GUY

There weren’t a lot of applause lines Tuesday morning; this was more about business than anything. There were few promises, no outlandish claims. There were no best systems in the country cited, nor were any rivals accused of sucking. There were no fake accents, nor would any really have applied.

There wasn’t even a whole lot of style. For a guy who just left Vegas, Odom didn’t look it, dressed in a grey (charcoal?) suit and tan-ish tie, no frills. No particular style.

There are general scripts every new coach typically sticks to at these introductions and Odom hit all the requisite bases, but didn’t do a whole lot of preening. Nothing flashy, just a humble, authentic-seeming, salt-of-the-earth type of persona. His message — and these events serve as an opportunity for coaches to lay their mandate during their window of universal approval — was about work and process and substantive stuff.

He didn’t need to suck up to the media, but him acknowledging his appreciation for the “important” role it plays did not come off like a guy who’s going to walk in here and act like a king, as a lot of peers might on their de facto coronation days. You have to understand that with the money at stake with Big Football these days, so many coaches are conditioned by “unconditional support” to lose their humility, if not their minds altogether.

Odom looks like the opposite. It’s my understanding he wanted Purdue as much as Purdue wanted him and his appreciation for the opportunity, and for his experience at UNLV, came through Tuesday.

One thing I can tell you about Purdue people: They love authenticity and they love humility. They loved Joe Tiller and Gene Keady like that and now Matt Painter.

Provided the results line up eventually, Odom will check a lot of the boxes Purdue folks tend to respond well to.

How often have you heard the term “Purdue fit” bandied about?

Well, this looks like it.

NEW COACH WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

Every coaching change comes with a period of energy and excitement, a chance for a new coach to be everything to everyone and to be framed by the tireless work required of taking on a new job. People will get excited, and so might recruits.

The tricky part is generating outcomes right away that feed the energy, then keep doing it. This is what Ryan Walters couldn’t do, but the Brohms, one way or another, always managed to do, whether it was pulling a monumental upset when it was least expected, developing or recruiting star players, running splashy offense or becoming attached to major stories, just anything to stay relevant and generate buzz.

Odom and his eventual staff will enjoy that window of opportunity on the recruiting trail and during the infrastructure-building process this spring, long before having chances to if not win, but compete. A good start, honestly, would just be to have people coming to the stadium again believing anything to be possible or for their televisions to still be on halfway through the third quarter. That sounds like a low bar, but 1-11 is what brought Odom here.

Purdue’s fan following was exceptionally strong this season and history suggests it will respond favorably to a new regime, but you keep peoples’ hearts and minds with results. Results come in different forms. Seeing a team compete and simply give great effort counts.

DISCIPLINE, FUNDAMENTALS AND SPECIAL TEAMS

This is what Purdue stakeholders needed to hear.

Even when it’s been successful, Purdue has not fielded terribly disciplined teams, and special teams have almost never been a real advantage consistently for the Boilermakers.

Clean that stuff up culturally around this place — be tougher and more energetic than opponents, scrub the incessant penalties, compete for 60 minutes and don’t beat yourself on special teams — and it’ll make a hell of a difference immediately. That is a point that gets lost when discussing how tethered Purdue should be to its quarterback-driven history.

That’s important, very important, to embrace your history, but if you throw for 500 yards every week, but don’t play winning football around it, who cares?

Every new coach talks about stuff like that, but Odom’s background and reputed wiring seems like it’s a reasonable short-term goal.

‘EXPLOSIVE OFFENSE’

One of the necessary bingo squares for this introduction.

When Purdue last saw Barry Odom in 2018, Drew Lock looked a bit like another Drew who’d played in Ross-Ade Stadium. (Not Bledsoe.) At UNLV, Odom’s teams have shredded defenses with an intricate and fast-paced running game.

It’s difficult to know what Purdue will be defined by offensively since there is no coordinator — that we know of — lined up, but Odom does have a track record of scoring points a bunch of different ways, and it’s the head coach that sets philosophy, so if you’re thinking a “defensive guy” might run archaic offense, that is not going to be the case, though the best-laid plans aren’t guarantees.

CONTINUITY AMIDST CHANGE

This may not have driven Purdue’s search process entirely, but the baseline of continuity that should come with hiring a coach who’s assembled staffs before and been in the business long enough to have a robust network — and a pre-existing roster to draw experienced knowns from — is a big deal.

He’ll need a great general manager or whatever form that role is going to take. What “great” in that role even means right now, no one knows. It’s all new.

That may be Odom’s most important hire, followed closely by offensive coordinator. Can I just throw offensive line coach in there, too? The offensive line is the Rubik’s Cube this program has been trying to solve for a generation.

We’d expect Odom — as would be the case with most head coach-to-head coach moves — to bring a core of staff with him and in time, some UNLV players.

It’s really important for everything to not be completely new. It’s important for there to be players to teach those around them about the environment they’re now competing in, and the men they’re playing for.

Odom obviously didn’t go into detail about the envoy that that might come with him. UNLV still has a bowl game to play.

There’s another dose of modesty and proper decorum, respect for the game, that Purdue fit.

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