Payne Durham Named Mackey Award Tight End of the Week

The junior tight end wins his first such award.

It was announced by the Purdue Football twitter account this morning that Junior Tight End Payne Durham has been named the Mackey Award Tight End of the Week.

It comes as not a huge surprise given the game against Oregon State that Durham had. He ended the game with seven catches for 120 yards including a long of 50. To go along with that he also had two touchdowns in a game in which Purdue won by just nine. Accounting for 12 points when your team wins by 9 seems pretty important to me.

The emergence of Durham will be a huge factor for this Purdue offense. It gives them another reliable weapon, and perhaps a safety valve, to go along with David Bell who will likely get the lion’s share of attention this year. Durham showed some signs of being an impact player last year but nothing compared to what he did in week one against Oregon State. You see the numbers he had against Oregon State listed above, well let’s compare those to his numbers for the entirety of the 6 game 2020 season. Durham had 16 catches for 166 yards and 3 touchdowns all of last season. It’s safe to say that Durham will see an increased role in the offense going forward.

Congrats to Durham on the award. He and the rest of Purdue will next be in action against UConn on Saturday at 3:00 PM on CBS Sports Network.