GoldandBlack.com's 20-year Purdue player draft: Pick No. 18
To help commemorate the 20-year anniversary of Purdue's magical turnaround 1997 season, GoldandBlack.com's staff will break up the rosters and select the best players to wear a Boilermaker uniform since Coach Joe Tiller's first season on the sidelines.
GoldandBlack.com's 20-year Purdue player draft will have 100 players chosen — two picks each weekday over the next 10 weeks. Boilermakers who were on Purdue rosters between 1997-2017 are eligible for selection. The draft order is Alan Karpick, Stacy Clardie, Kyle Charters and Brian Neubert.
Clardie is up.
Draft ticker: No. 1-17
How about a consensus All-American for my next pick?
Not a bad place to start my offense, a dynamic receiver who's Purdue's all-time career leader in receptions and No. 2 in receiving yards. Taylor Stubblefield is off the board at No. 18, the second pick in the fifth round.
By the time I started covering Purdue in 2004, Stubblefield already was well-established as the team's stud receiver, but it was cool to be there for one of the program's more iconic plays in Week 4. Shoot, it may have been the highest point of the program I've personally witnessed: When, from the 3-yard line, Stubblefield got a free release off the line against a Notre Dame cornerback early in the third quarter, caught an easy-floating 20-yard pass from Kyle Orton and outran everybody the final 77 yards for a touchdown. It wasn't so much the distance, of course, though that was impressive. It was Stubblefield's celebration, the left arm shooting up about the 40-yard line after he slipped a tackle and eventually pumping a "Boiler Up," the play highlighting a 41-16 blowout in South Bend that vaulted Purdue to a 4-0 start.
Two weeks later, the 10th-ranked Boilermakers lost steam against No. 4 Wisconsin.
But Stubblefield turned in an All-America caliber season, catching 89 passes for 1,095 yards and a whopping 16 touchdowns, the most in a single season for a Purdue receiver. They were career-high numbers, capping a career that had at least 70 catches and 789 yards every season, en route to 325 receptions for 3,629 yards over four years. His 21 career TD catches rank fifth all time, tied with Dorien Bryant.
At some point, I'll obviously have to draft a QB to throw to Stubblefield, but with his skill set and ability to snatch balls out of the air, won't really matter who that guy is. Nice to have a player who can be counted on with my first offensive selection.
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