GoldandBlack.com's 20-year Purdue player draft: Pick No. 53
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.
Karpick makes a move for speed in his secondary with his first pick of the 14th round.
Draft ticker: Nos. 1-52
Jacques Reeves had a lot going for him. He was fast, a conference champion level track performer for Purdue. He had decent size, standing 6-foot-1 and weighing 194 pounds during his days as a Boilermaker. And he kept getting better as his career progressed.
And with Anthony Brown at the other corner, I like the trajectory and foot speed of both of my guys. Coincidentally, both blossomed late in their college careers and proved good enough to be drafted by the same team — the Dallas Cowboys — Reeves in the seventh round of the 2004 draft and Brown in the sixth round, a dozen years later.
Reeves ended up having a pretty successful NFL career, playing for the Cowboys, Texans and Chiefs, playing regularly for six seasons (2004-09) and finishing out his career with Kansas City in 2012. He had six career interceptions in the NFL and 193 lifetime tackles.
My defense is built on speed at the edge, and I have plenty of it with the likes of Gilbert Gardner, Akin Ayodele, Chike Okeafor and Brown. Purdue is not loaded with immense talent at corner, but I feel fortunate to have two of the better ones that have played for the Boilermakers in the past 20 years.
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