ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 24, ISSUE 6 79
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N F L B O I L E R S
BY KYLE CHARTERS
KCharters@GoldandBlack.com
A
third of the way through the
2006 season, Cliff Avril wasn't
a particularly happy Boilermaker.
Then a junior, probably just as he
was starting to understand the nu-
ances of playing linebacker in the
Big Ten, Avril was asked to make a
switch; Purdue needed another de-
fensive end, one to help balance out
its line with Anthony Spencer hav-
ing a monster season on the other
side.
Avril, though, didn't like it, and
made that known in a meeting with
defensive coordinator Brock Spack.
"I'm not really a vocal person,
so I wasn't going to go screaming,
knocking on doors," Avril said in
late June, when he was in West
Lafayette for the National Football
Foundation Honors Dinner. "But I had a meeting with
Coach Spack and I was like, 'I'm not really too pleased
with this move.'
"But he broke it down for me, told me to
trust him and said we had all these guys who
transitioned from linebacker to D-end that
were playing in the League, from Akin Ayodele
to Shaun Phillips and all these different guys. I
was like, 'That's cool and all, but I just felt like
I was getting things going as a linebacker.'"
As it turned out, Spack and Co. knew what
they were doing. Avril has blossomed in the NFL,
culminating in the 2013 season in which he
helped lead the Seattle Seahawks to their first
Super Bowl championship.
The seventh-year veteran was a pass-rush
specialist last season, totaling 8.0 sacks — he
now has 47.5 in his six-year career — among
his 20 tackles, with five forced fumbles.
"The move worked," Avril said, looking
back now, "and the coaches knew what they
Sandra Dukes
Avril was happy to share some of the spotlight at the NFF "Celebrating
our Legends X" Honors Dinner with Leroy Keyes, who was inducted into
the Indiana Football Hall of Fame that evening.
'HECK OF A RIDE'
Avril enjoying NFL experience, Super Bowl win
Sandra Dukes
A week after getting his Seahawks' Super Bowl ring, Cliff Avril was at Purdue,
where he was given the Drew Brees Mental Toughness Award at the 10th-annual
National Football Foundation (NFF) Honors Dinner. Here, he stands with Coach
Darrell Hazell (left) and John Purdue Club senior director Chris Clopton.
