Bucs TE Payne Durham Is An Aggressive “Football Dude”

Heading into the draft the Bucs were linked to several tight ends, which made sense because of the tremendous depth of the position and an obvious need. After hosting some of the top prospects, they waited until Day 3 to select Purdue’s Payne Durham. The team was thrilled he was still available in the fifth round and moved up four spots to ensure they wouldn’t miss out him.

Pewter Report spoke with Durham’s tight end coach at Purdue Ryan Wallace, and like every other player selected in the draft, Durham received rave reviews about his character and leadership.

“Payne’s an awesome, awesome person,” Wallace said. “He was a team captain for us. He’s one of those guys that has an infectious leadership quality to him,where he’s going to be able to relate to anybody and everybody in a locker room. He comes from a tough background. He’s had to go through a lot of adversity. In terms of a person, he’s a coach on the field, you can’t ask for a better leader in the position room.

“He’s one of the best leaders I’ve been around as a coach. I’ve coached Tyler Higbee, I’ve coached Bryson Hopkins, who’s the backup for the Rams right now. I graduated college with Jack Doyle, who was the Colts’ starter for the last nine years. I got to play with him and he’s a phenomenal leader. Payne’s phenomenal in that aspect of his game. He understands how people should work. He understands how you should go about your game day prep, your weekly preparation, and what it takes to maintain your ability at the highest level.”

Payne Durham Knows When To Be A Vocal Leader

While some players are the quiet type and lead by example, Payne Durham demonstrates the qualities to be a vocal leader as well. His ability to adapt his leadership to players from different backgrounds sets him apart, and the respect he commanded at Purdue had his teammates attention.

“He’s pretty vocal, but he does a good job of not always kind of being the loud guy all the time,” Wallace said. “He speaks up when the moment’s right because he knows when to kind of pull somebody aside and talk to them. I’ve seen him kind of do it both ways, but he just kind of understands different people and he just from where he grew up in Atlanta and stuff like that. He’s been around a lot of different types of people from a lot of different types of backgrounds and he understands how to relate to those people.

“He does a good job picking and choosing his moments. I’ve seen him get after people if he needs to get after them, but just because of the respect that our team at Purdue had for him, those guys, they listened up and they kind of straightened up.”

Payne Durham Knows How To Train And Puts In The Extra Work

One of the recurring themes of this year’s Bucs rookie class was their work ethic and desire to be better versions of themselves on and off the field. Payne Durham is no different in that respect. With only one year of high school football under his belt due to to lacrosse background, his experience was limited, but Durham put in the extra work especially over the last two seasons.

Purdue TE Payne Durham Photo By: USA Today

“The last two years he was doing his master’s program this year, which was for the most part online,” Wallace said. “So he had a lot of time where he could come in. Even last year, a lot of his time was spent throughout a normal day, Sunday through Saturday, he’s in there. We’re doing a separate meeting for about an hour and a half, probably three to four times a week where it’s just he and I and maybe a couple other people where we’re just kind of doing a little bit of extra film work on the opponent and stuff like that.

“He understands how to use the training room, how to take care of his body. Even when he’s not hurt or banged up, you gotta maintain yourself, because it’s a violent game. You take a lot of hits, and it’s a lot of mileage on your body. He does a good job maintaining himself, and really over the last two years is when he’s really buckled down on it. I have got a lot of one-on-one time to really buckle down and kind of dissect opponents and do a lot of stuff like that. He’s a football dude.”

Durham chose to play lacrosse in high school and didn’t play football until his senior year, which limited his options for college. But he quickly made an impact as a redshirt freshman at Purdue. While he only caught nine passes for 82 yards in his first season, four of them went for touchdowns. Durham scored 21 touchdowns for the Boilermakers over four seasons, averaging five TDs per year.

“The most impressive thing to me about him was he only played five months of high school football,” Wallace said. “For a guy like that, there was no tentativeness to him when he jumped into the sport and was all in. He’s like, ‘If I’m doing this, I want to be great.’ His mentality stayed the same all five years at Purdue. He just worked himself into what he is.”

Payne Durham Has Lots Of Untapped Potential

Payne Durham’s first two years at Purdue were filled with modest production with just 25 receptions for 248 yards and seven touchdowns. Yet his junior and senior seasons were much more productive as he caught 101 passes for 1,027 yards and 14 scores from 2021-22. Durham had to grow physically and mentally as a player with limited experience coming in, while also realizing what kind of player he could become.

“I think the best thing Payne did was he identified early on what his shortcomings were,” Wallace said. “He knew he was not going to just burn somebody down. He’s not a 4.5 guy and he’d be the first one to tell you. So when we started studying NFL players the best guys at that position you don’t go watch the Travis Kelces of the world because Payne’s game is not like that. He’s not a receiving mismatch like Kelce is.

Purdue TE Payne Durham Photo By: USA Today

“Payne’s going to have to understand where the zones are and understand how to defeat zone coverage and how to leverage man coverage and how to beat guys with a little bit of physicality without going over the top with it. I think that’s something that he really had to fine tune. His route running and his details and understanding how guys were going to play him. I think he does a great job of that because the last few years he had 101 catches at Purdue, and I think that’s something that he really improved on.”

While being a red zone threat and catching touchdowns was something Durham developed into over time, his size allowed him to be an effective blocker early in his Boilermakers career.

“Obviously, he understood pretty quick that he’s 6-foot-5, 260 pounds and can block the shit out of some people,” Wallace said. “So he was pretty aggressive with that. He plays the game aggressive. I love how he plays. He’s intense. He’s got some intensity to him.

“But in terms of his growth as a player, I think you look at the lacrosse background. You look at the hand-eye coordination that comes along with that. You kind of get a little bit of the basketball stuff in terms of short space, kind of awkward athleticism where everything’s not always going to be your cutting on a dime. You’re going to have to change directions and think on the run and kind of make different moves. I think a lot of that skill set transfers over.”

With just Cade Otton and Ko Kieft, two tight ends from last year’s draft class, slated to be on the 53-man roster this year, the Bucs had a pressing need to find another tight end that could block and catch and contribute early. Durham’s background and production from his days at Purdue gives the Bucs confidence that he can make an early impact similar to the way Otton and Kieft did last year.

“You look at a guy that’s 6-foot-5, he’s as big as he is and you get that skill set coming with him, it’s a guy coming in with no bad habits.” Wallace said. “So you don’t have to coach a bad habit out of him. He was all-in. I think that’s the big thing. Because he was all-in and he worked his butt off on what he’s doing, he was able to maximize his skill set. He’s still got a lot of potential left to untap just because he’s only played the game for five years.”