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Jeff Brohm pleased with Purdue’s WR depth despite no big names entering 2022
By Paul Harvey
Published:
Purdue is facing unfamiliar territory coming into the 2022 season. Fortunately, head coach Jeff Brohm still believes the team is well equipped on the offensive side of the ball.
Going back to 2018, Purdue has never lacked big-play receivers. The Rondale Moore era overlapped with the emergence of David Bell as an elite threat at the collegiate level. However, both of those players are now off to the NFL.
During his B1G Media Days appearance Wednesday, Brohm was asked about the absence of a big-name receiver on the roster. While Brohm acknowledged that fact, he pointed to a deep group that was partly replenished via the transfer portal.
Broc Thompson, Tyrone Tracy, TJ Sheffield and Elijah Canion were some of the players specifically highlighted by Brohm in his response.
“This year we’re going to have newcomers you may not have heard about as much. I do think we’ve built very good depth in that room, and we have a lot of guys I think can emerge and step up and hopefully play close to that level if they’re playing well,” Brohm explained.
“Broc Thompson stepped up in our bowl game. He was a transfer from Marshall that we took from Indianapolis. Had a great game in that bowl game on two bad knees. He had surgery, and he’s almost close to being fully healed and ready for the season. I think he’ll emerge as a big play receiver for us. We talked about Charlie Jones.
“I think TJ Sheffield did some really good things for us as well, playing on the slot and the inside. He had ankle surgery, hurt it in the bowl game on a touchdown catch, but he’s back 100 percent.
“We added Tyrone Tracy as well, who’s going to play at receiver and in the backfield for us, who’s from Indianapolis, so he knows a lot of the guys on our team. I think he’ll step up.
“And there’s probably three or four others that really will probably see the field, Elijah Canion, Abdur Yaseen, Mershawn Rice. So we think we have quite a bit of depth. It’s just a matter of those guys haven’t played a lot of football in games. They haven’t shown to the world they can do it in a real game, but we feel they have good promise.”
Paul is a lifelong fan and student of all things college football. He has been covering college football since 2017 and the B1G since 2018.