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.
With the second pick, Clardie chooses:
Previous selections: No. 1
Ryan Kerrigan never really liked that "Superman" nickname he garnered at Purdue.
He would have rather not been in the spotlight at all, let alone be tagged as a mock superhero.
Of course, his play left few other words to justly describe the All-American defensive end.
Kerrigan was, in a word, beastly.
The numbers are there to support this kind of high-level selection in our draft: 33.5 career sacks (tied for second all-time at Purdue), 57 career tackles for loss (fifth) and 14 career forced fumbles (first), to name a few.
Perhaps his best individual game came against one of the Big Ten’s best programs, which made it even more impressive: Nine tackles, including three sacks, and two forced fumbles against Ohio State.
He was nearly impossible to block one-on-one, able to use incredible strength — he was one of the team’s strongest players his last two seasons — to bull rush tackles and push them into the backfield to disrupt quarterbacks or he could use his speed to beat tackles off the edge to get hurries and sacks.
Teammates raved about how much of an athletic freak Kerrigan was, and that certainly was a key piece to his production. But he was so much more than about physical skill.
He played with a relentless motor, and his work ethic was nearly unmatched.
How’d Kerrigan feel about that nine-tackle, three-sack, two-forced fumble game that season? All he could think about was getting cut off by a tackle on a play that Terrell Pryor almost ran in for a touchdown and another play in which he missed a tackle.
That pursuit of perfection helped Kerrigan nearly get there. Certainly made him worthy of such a high selection in our draft. All those dominant performances, all that work and effort, they’re worthy of praise.
But here’s the thing: They’re not necessarily why Kerrigan was my No. 2 pick. To me, he was an uncommon and special player because he was never impressed with himself. That aw-shucks attitude was genuine — and still is in place to this day, now a millionaire and Pro Bowler. Kerrigan’s character, his attitude, his personality, those could have qualified him to be an All-American just as much as anything else.
Happy to have him on my team.
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