I was chatting with a writer from our Purdue site, Stacy Clardie, about Austin Appleby since I was interested in writing another piece about him. (I wrote this up back in January: https://florida.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1842609). But in our convo when I was asking her which former Purdue players who knew Appleby well would be good to talk to, she delivered some pretty solid insight on Appleby I thought I'd share with you guys:
You could maybe ask one of those guys about the time Appleby stood up in the locker room and basically said he was the best quarterback on the team -- and he wasn't starting at the time. That tells a bit about his personality. He's always been confident in his abilities. But he also feels like that because he's a guy who really does put in work. He talks often about how he'll be the best prepared guy. He generally was one of the team's best workers and really wanted to be a leader. He's a vocal guy for sure, but it seems like he backs that up in work.
I like the kid a lot. I hope he has success down there. I don't think the system was all that great here, and I think the coaches never really trusted him, so that was hard to play without looking over a shoulder thinking you'd get yanked. No doubt he had issues with interceptions -- but, personally, I looked at that like a risk-reward thing. I liked that he'd take shots. Purdue's coaches didn't. He is a strong-armed guy who is pretty intelligent and essentially was groomed to play QB. He has the body type to be a pocket passer, but Purdue had him doing some option read stuff, and though he's not ideal for that, he's strong and generally seemed to make the right reads there. My concern with him -- and it's always been -- is I'm not sure he handles pressure well. Like actual blitzing/defense pressure, not "pressure" in the sense of big moments. Honestly, Purdue didn't have many big moments here. I think there's a bit of panic in him under pressure, and that's when he struggles to make the right decisions. But that's just my opinion.
You could maybe ask one of those guys about the time Appleby stood up in the locker room and basically said he was the best quarterback on the team -- and he wasn't starting at the time. That tells a bit about his personality. He's always been confident in his abilities. But he also feels like that because he's a guy who really does put in work. He talks often about how he'll be the best prepared guy. He generally was one of the team's best workers and really wanted to be a leader. He's a vocal guy for sure, but it seems like he backs that up in work.
I like the kid a lot. I hope he has success down there. I don't think the system was all that great here, and I think the coaches never really trusted him, so that was hard to play without looking over a shoulder thinking you'd get yanked. No doubt he had issues with interceptions -- but, personally, I looked at that like a risk-reward thing. I liked that he'd take shots. Purdue's coaches didn't. He is a strong-armed guy who is pretty intelligent and essentially was groomed to play QB. He has the body type to be a pocket passer, but Purdue had him doing some option read stuff, and though he's not ideal for that, he's strong and generally seemed to make the right reads there. My concern with him -- and it's always been -- is I'm not sure he handles pressure well. Like actual blitzing/defense pressure, not "pressure" in the sense of big moments. Honestly, Purdue didn't have many big moments here. I think there's a bit of panic in him under pressure, and that's when he struggles to make the right decisions. But that's just my opinion.
