Drue Tranquil became the second LB in the class of 2014 to verbal to Purdue today in one of the worst-kept surprises of the recruiting season thus far. Tranquil seemed like a Purdue lean based on a few of his comments inthe last few weeks...but he decided to visit his final three schools in a two day period, back to back to back to make sure he was getting all the info he could from the staff.
With all of the cards on the table from Purdue, IU and Cincy...and all of the questions answered, Tranquil made the right call.
Earlier in the week, IU had an LB verbal to Coach Wilson...and a few Purdue fans were a bit upset with the news...but it looks to me like Purdue got a tremendous athlete who can fill out a bit and be an absolute terror for OCs to contend with at the LB position.
Tranquil did it all last year- returned a KO for a touchdown, ran the ball, played the slot, played wideout, played Wildcat QB, played LB and played safety.
I like doing this because it's kind of fun- but if I'd compare him to an ex-Boiler or two, he'd fall on a scale between Bernard Pollard and a healthy Jason Werner. Good speed, tenacious, rangy...and seems to be one of these guys who just has fun playing football.
He and Gelen Robinson might eventually compliment eachother quite well in the middle of the field...for those of you who don't know Robinson as anything other than one of Glenn's son, he's extremely physical and has a mean streak to him. Think Kyle Williams without the baggage...or better yet, he falls in the range of Akin Ayodele and Landon Johnson.
A ton of people on GBI's board and Twitter alike thought aloud a few years ago as Hope filled his classes with Florida players, that Purdue shouldn't waste their time with guys from Indiana. Hazell seems to disagree with this premise- he already has three verbals from the Boilermaker state in this far-from-complete class of 8...Hope (for the sake of comparison) averaged about three per entire class (around 22 player average).
I honestly don't care where the kids are from...but I want the best-possible players for the system who will be represent the university well both on and off the field. Their homestate before they started college doesn't matter...if they consider themselves Boilermakers four years later does.