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GOLD & BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 25, ISSUE 4 25 matures and goes through that 19- or 20-year-old growth spurt. "He's going to be a very big man. He's already big. And one of his great strengths is his ability to move for as big as he is. He played basketball for a lot of years and he's really good out there, too, flexible in his hips. The one thing maybe he needs work with is pass protection. We didn't do that much. We ran the football, did some play-action. He'll need some work there, need to be coached up on that. … He's one of those kids, though, that you tell him what to do and he'll work his tail off to get it done." It remains to be seen where Men- dez will begin his college career, whether at guard or tackle. Wherever it is, he seems like an- other lineman who'll fit the profile Purdue's looking for up front. "I'm just physical," he said. "I try to be physical on pass plays. Some people see pass plays as break time, because you're not running as much, but pass plays are the most fun time for me, because that's when I can re- ally handle the D-lineman however I want." DAVID ROSE Purdue found the Maryland defensive back in December, of- fered after a few days of close in- spection and i m m e d i a t e l y landed the 6-foot, 175-pounder, pulling him away from a commitment to Toledo. As was the common thread among Purdue's recruits in the secondary this year, Rose provides height and length, Johnson said, at a position where such things have become pre- cious commodities nowadays. "I can be a rangy, long-armed cor- ner," Rose said. "I can come up and press also, play the press-man off to the zone. I play receiver too, so I have a lot of receiving highlights, going to get the ball. So I'm a receiver play- ing corner, physical. Of course I've got to work on things. My speed and technique, can always get better. But they told me they liked what they saw, from a size perspective, physicality, that I'm a bigger corner." Rose said he knew throughout the recruiting process that a major-con- ference offer would come his way. It did in mid-December when Pur- due took the plunge on Rose, who played safety and wide receiver most- ly prior to moving to cornerback as a junior. "A lot of schools from the Big Ten were recruiting me, but none of them came through with an offer," Rose said. "Every coach said I was good enough to play at the BCS level but nobody had offered. So when Purdue offered me, I finally got the oppor- tunity, so I didn't want to waste any time with it, especially with the edu- cation I can get at Purdue. That's the best you can get." Rose made 32 tackles with 13 pass- es defensed as a senior and didn't al- low a touchdown through the course of the season. As a wide receiver, he caught 26 passes for 405 yards and seven touch- downs. JOE SCHOPPER It remains to be seen whether the kicker from I n d i a n a p o l i s Cathedral will be Purdue's punter from Day 1 — Thom- as Meadows re- turns for his senior season — but the Boilermaker staff felt this was the class to recruit another punter. After losing a scholarship punter to transfer last summer, Purdue offered Schopper, who it had already prepared to recruit as an invited walk-on. He quickly accepted, choosing Pur- due over preferred walk-on chances at Texas and Minnesota. As a senior at Cathedral, Schopper averaged 37 per punt and was named the state's Mr. Football position win- ner. ELIJAH SINDELAR Asked to sum up the Boilermak- ers' new quar- terback in one word, Purdue offensive coor- dinator John Shoop thinks for a second. "Talented," he comes up with. Sindelar, in fact, might be the most physically gifted quarterback on the Purdue roster, which he'll have a chance to prove once he recovers from the torn ACL he sustained in his final high school game. Kentucky's Mr. Football as a senior, the 6-4, 200-plus-pound record-setter from Caldwell County High School in Princeton, Ky., was not just the quar- terback wanted for its 2015 class, but