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time or something you want them to be ready to take the reins in the opener? Shoop: "We want them to be ready Day 1. It's not a scenario where we want to grow into it. We're setting the bar real high and these sons of guns — everybody, not just the quarterback — but everybody better work their tails off to meet that standard. We don't dumb things down. If you can't keep up, you'll get Offensive coordinator John Shoop Often when a Purdue player speaks about new offensive coordinator John Shoop, the word "genius" comes up. Shoop certainly has had the experience to build up his vast knowledge. He quickly ascended the professional coaching ranks — his first full-time coaching jobs — moving from quality control on the Carolina Panthers' to their QBs coach to an offensive coordinator role with the Bears by the time he was 31. He spent 12 seasons in the NFL before taking a coordinator and quarterbacks coach job in college. At every step, he's mentored quarterbacks by challenging them and expecting greatness. Shoop runs his meeting rooms to get the maximum effectiveness, showing when players make mistakes and quickly attacking how to avoid them again. "It's not the type of room where you have to say five nice things before you say something critical," Shoop said, smiling. "We can get to the meat of the matter there." It's an approach that players have come to appreciate, the easily explained solutions to the problems, the honesty and the sense of humor sometimes used to deliver critiques. "He's constantly making you uncomfortable, challenging you to improve your game and to challenge yourself mentally day in and day out," said senior Rob Henry, in a battle to become Shoop's first starter at Purdue. "He's really going to be a difference-maker for us. I truly believe that. All the knowledge and the background he has and brings to the team is something that is really going to benefit us." Henry — and the rest of his offensive teammates — also are excited at Shoop's new offense. The pro style setup may have the Boilermakers lining up under center for the most part, but there's still a bevy of options with formations, motions, shifts and personnel groupings, all staples of what Shoop has run at different coaching stops. And it's largely what teams in the NFL still utilize, giving Purdue's players a unique opportunity to watch film of Peyton Manning or Drew Brees and see their own offense. It's an offense that helped transform T.J. Yates at North Carolina — Shoop's only other full-time college coaching job — into an NFL quarterback who won a playoff game as a rookie with the Houston Texans. — Stacy Clardie 28 • Gold and Black IllustrateD • volume 23, issue 6 off the train. But our guys are going to work hard to keep up. "We're going to ask our quarterbacks to do a lot. We're going to ask them to get in and out of things, to make decisions on the go, to make decisions pre-snap, post-snap and to do an awful lot of things in the huddle, if we do huddle. Or at the line of scrimmage if we don't. There's a lot on our quarterback's table, and it is not going to be easy to play quarterback here. It's going to take a special brand of guy. But I think we've got some." Gold and Black: You don't have a lot of starting experience across the board on offense. Does that worry you at all? Shoop: "I don't know if worry is the right word, but I'm sure aware of it. This offense graduated an awful lot of productivity: the running back, the receiver, the quarterback position. I think we have to acknowledge that, but in some ways, some of these guys, we don't have to re-engineer anything. It's the first time they've heard some of this stuff. It's their first time in the rodeo. "The more in practice we can put them in real-life experiences — and practice is never like a game — but we're on the sidelines in practice, we've got a time clock in practice, we signal in practice, we shuffle personnel in practice. So all the things (players may be like), 'Oh, nuts, I didn't expect it to be like that' when you get in the game, we're trying to make like that in practice. For crying out loud, if you come to our practice, Coach (Darrell) Hazell has music blaring half the time. Sometimes, really, even as a coach, you find it frustrating, GBIprint.com GoldandBlack.com