Written by Amanda Pavelka (@amandapavelka3)
Monday morning, Indiana announced the addition of Kevin Peoples to the football program. Peoples’ trek from his former four-year term at Tulane to Bloomington was complete this week. He made it to experience his first Hoosier basketball game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Wednesday, where he stopped to introduce himself at the press conference beforehand.
“I’m very excited to be at Indiana University,” Peoples said. “(I’m) excited to be with Coach Allen and the rest of the coaches. I’m looking forward to building on what he's already established. He's created a great environment, great culture (in this) football program and I’m very, very excited to be a part of it.”
Offensive line coach Darren Hiller was amongst the familiar faces welcoming him to Bloomington. The two worked together for eight years at Arkansas State from 2002-09. The Butte, Montana native had known Tom Allen and Kane Wommack previously as well.
Peoples brings 27 years of coaching experience to IU’s young defensive line—one that he has plans to work intensely to develop.
“You know, we've had a lot of success at the place I've been developing guys,” Peoples said. “We’ve coached several NFL defensive linemen, and we're not at schools that we're necessarily recruiting four and five star kids.”
Two defensive linemen were drafted under Peoples’ wing at Tulane— DE Ade Aruna to the Minnesota Vikings in 2018, and DT Tanzel Smart to the Los Angeles Rams in 2017. Peoples made waves in Tulane’s football program, helping them win back-to-back bowl games in 2018 and 2019 for the first time in program history.
“What we look for is someone who has a great ceiling, great upside and we want to build it,” he said. “Obviously we'd like to have the biggest, strongest fastest guys we could have. Defensive linemen are hard to find. If you just walk the streets of Bloomington, you're not going to see a lot of 6’3 or 6’4 guys that are 270 to 300 pounds that can run real fast. So, you know, we're going to start obviously, looking in the state of Indiana. This year's a great year, talent-wise in this state. So, we're going to start locally and then expand out.”
Having spent the last four years down South in Louisiana, with a 27-year-long list of contacts, Peoples’ connections are a valuable gateway to talent of Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Arkansas, and the surrounding states— many of which have not been frequented by IU football in recent years.
“The hardest thing to find is guys that have pass rush ability, and those guys with the twitch and the get-off off the ball— that’s something that we're going to be to work tirelessly to find and some that we need to be successful to get pressure on a quarterback,” Peoples said.
At first glance of film, Peoples noticed potential in the young defensive linemen room, led by senior DT Jerome Johnson and senior DE Michael Ziemba.
“We think we have good depth. Jerome (Johnson), we think he is a very good player.” Peoples said.” I know he's a great kid to speak with and I know he's a talented football player. So anytime you have talent and character, that’s a great place to start.
“Mike Ziemba is a talented kid. I've been really impressed with what they've done as far as how hard they played some young defensive linemen that I think have a real chance,” Peoples said.
Junior DE James Head is another notable, talented starter for IU’s defensive line last season, that he noticed was a “high ceiling” player at first look.
“He seems like he's very intelligent, high football IQ— he flashed it on film.” Peoples said. “Two days away from getting out there and getting effort. So I'm very, very excited about him as well.”
