GoldandBlack.com's 20-year Purdue player draft: Pick No. 51
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 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.
Charters starts the second half of the draft ...
Draft ticker: Nos. 1-50
Where's Jake Replogle fit?
That's been a question, at least for me, as we've gotten into the middle of our summer-long draft. I answered my question today, as we start the draft's second half, by selecting Replogle at No. 51. The defensive tackle is the most-recent player to be picked, only the second (with Ricardo Allen) who played during the Darrell Hazell Era.
A three-year starter, Replogle was a highly effective defensive tackle who probably could have been even more so had he had more help in the front seven. Still, in the last three seasons, the 6-foot-5, 290-pounder had 145 tackles, 34 for loss (his 35 for his career tie Brandon Villarreal for 14th all-time at Purdue) and 7.5 sacks. He entered 2016 on the watch lists for the Chuck Bednarik Award and Outland Trophy.
But the season didn't go as expected for unfortunate reasons outside his control. Replogle missed four games during the season — yet he still had 45 tackles, 9.5 TFLs — due to a head injury. Replogle returned in the second-to-last game of the season, and had a ridiculous eight tackles and 2.5 for loss in the first half only vs. Wisconsin, then had seven tackles, three TFLs and a sack vs. Indiana in the finale. Shortly afterward, however, Replogle announced his retirement, forgoing a shot at the NFL due to his health concerns.
But man, Replogle was a stud. Just look at those last two games, only six quarters total, when he had 5.5 tackles for loss and a sack, terrorizing the Badgers' and Hoosiers' backfields. But his greatest series might have been vs. Iowa in 2015, when he almost single-handedly kept the Boilermakers in the game against the undefeated Hawkeyes with a couple of third-quarter sacks.
I have little doubt Replogle would have had a long NFL career, if only ...
His selection here completes my defensive line — and brings me close to finishing the front seven — and I couldn't be happier as we start the draft's second half.
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