They arrived with their eyes and ears wide open, ready to soak up every nugget of information ranging from the most complicated concept to the simplest, most basic of ideas.
And after spending a day with the Purdue Boilermakers coaching staff in West Lafayette, Indiana this week, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers offensive coaching staff left as energized as ever to apply some newfound principles to what they do daily here.
The idea behind all this is simple: as the old saying goes, ‘If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.’
“This is our professional development,” began Bombers offensive coordinator Paul LaPolice in a chat with bluebombers.com. “We go to try and get new ideas or new plays, a new way to teach. It was all about what we could learn from them.”
Pretty cool today at our visit at Purdue today to see 3 former bomber QBs @joeyelliott14 @brianbrohm @pierceQB11 all excelling at what they do!! Great day talking football at Purdue. pic.twitter.com/ga6f8KF2Yi
— Paul LaPolice (@PaulLaPolice) March 7, 2018
The head coach of the Boilermakers is Jeff Brohm, with former Bombers quarterback Brian Brohm now Purdue’s co-offensive coordinator. Bombers QB coach Buck Pierce reached out to Brian – a former teammate – and got the thumbs up for Winnipeg’s offensive staff, also including offensive line coach Marty Costello and running backs coach Kevin Bourgoin, to sit in on some of their coaching sessions.
Jeff Brohm just completed his first year at Purdue, where the Boilermakers averaged 25.2 points per game. Prior to that, he was the head coach at Western Kentucky, where the Hilltoppers went 30-10 and averaged a whopping 44.6 points per game over three seasons.
“They’re a good offensive team,” said LaPolice. “And you would like got to go to a place where somebody knows you. You can go to a place where you don’t have any connections and they’ll at least let you watch their film, but we were able to sit in their coaches’ meetings. They were going over their practice film and so we sat in the back and just listened and took notes.
“In the afternoon, we sat in on the meetings with the players being coached, too.”
The Boilermakers were also holding their Pro Day when the Bombers visited and after taking in the sessions with the entire coaching staff, LaPolice, Pierce, Costello and Bourgoin also sat in on the meetings of the Purdue positional coaches.
“They had a familiarity with the CFL because of Brian, but Jeff said he had also watched games,” said LaPolice. “That’s important because it doesn’t begin with ‘What the heck is the CFL all about?’
“They were unbelievably accommodating, from the head coach down. They gave us every opportunity to watch everything.”
Coaches Kevin Bourgoin, Marty Costello and Buck Pierce in the gym at Purdue with Brian Brohm.
The Bombers staff mined the Purdue coaches with some simple questions like, ’What are you really proud of that you do as a teacher?’, ‘What is the best thing you do in practice?’, ‘What’s the best thing you do in gameplanning?’
The Boilermakers sent the Bombers some game films to study before arriving, and Brian Brohm asked the Bombers to provide video of their best two games from 2017 (LaPolice offered up the win over Edmonton in August when the offence racked up 538 yards and the victory over Ottawa in September when they totalled 513 yards).
“I don’t like getting there and waste time saying, ‘Hey, what are you good at?’ I’d rather get there and say, ‘I really liked this, this, this…’ They were awesome,” said LaPolice. “The head coach had stuff to do, but he just hung out and talked to us. And Brian had studied our film and was interested in some of the things we do as his connection to our league and our team meant he was familiar with what we do. That doesn’t happen everywhere. As one of my friends in coaching in the U.S. joked, ‘I get a headache when I watch your film because of all the motion. It’s like driving in a car too long…’ But Brian is used to that and we spent some time explaining our concepts to him. There was some give and take because we were able to say, ‘Watching your film, we think this could be a really good concept for you…’
“Some things transfer, some things don’t because of the differences in our games but it’s just great to share ideas.”
The Bombers exited the Purdue facility at around 6 p.m., drove back to Indianapolis and then spent that night going over their meetings amongst themselves. The club factors these professional development trips for their coaches into their football operations budget. Over the years, LaPolice has been to the University of Minnesota, Northwestern, the Buffalo Bills, Green Bay Packers, Indiana, Ball State, and spent two weeks at Princeton while he was working as an analyst at TSN.
The locker room of the Purdue Boilermakers.
The fact-finding mission, it should be pointed out, wasn’t just about the Xs and Os of the game. Even the simplest things from what the Boilermakers have in their facilities, right down to how they set up their meeting rooms – including how the pens, pencils and highlighters are arranged.
Yes… that much detail.
“I was in their meeting and liked how they stored all their pens and pencils for their quarterbacks… it was just how it was arranged so that nobody is scrambling for that stuff when the meeting starts,” said LaPolice. “Like I said, we were looking at everything, every detail, even from what they do with their player lockers, the posters in their meeting rooms.
“It doesn’t always work like this, but these guys were genuinely interested in what we do and in the CFL. I spoke way more than I ever had on this trip because of that. Usually we are information gatherer, not an information giver. That made this one cool.”
