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.
Clardie completes her backfield with a fiery, efficient QB.
Draft ticker: Nos. 1-89
As soon as Kyle took Kyle Orton with the third overall pick in this draft, I knew who my quarterback was going to be. Selecting him this late — with only a couple rounds to go — is not an indication of his worth.
Joey Elliott was going to be my guy over Curtis Painter, over Billy Dicken and over Robert Marve for a couple reasons.
No. 1, the way he played the position. Elliott wasn't the most physically skilled guy out of the "others" QB group — not including Drew Brees and Orton — but he was incredibly smart and understood his limitations well enough that he was going to be efficient and effective. That's who he was during his only full season as a starting QB in 2009: When Purdue nearly had a 3,000-yard passer, 1,000-yard receiver and 1,000-yard rusher for the first time in school history.
No. 2, his personality. Hard not to love Elliott's moxie. He was straight-forward with his teammates, expecting a lot but also holding himself to a high standard, and led with his heart. He was confident in his abilities, didn't care who said otherwise, and enjoyed every minute of his opportunity. He had a fire in him that Painter, for one, never did.
I remember talking to Elliott in a hallway at Northwestern in 2008, after he'd separated his shoulder in the game — he opted to take a safety head-on because he wanted to get a first down — and you could just feel the disappointment oozing out him. He knew it was a missed opportunity. Perhaps a solid game there could have meant he'd finish the season as the starter — he was in because Painter had gotten yanked. But he knew there wasn't anything he could do and said he wasn't going to "mope" about himself: The focus needed to be on picking up his teammates, improving for the next week. That's the type of leader he was.
He was also a pretty good player.
That 2008 experienced sharpened him for his turn as a senior in 2009.
And he came back ready, strong and intent to lead.
Maybe no game better showcased all the reasons I wanted Elliott as my QB than the one at Michigan that year. Elliott not only threw for a career-high 367 yards with two TDs, but he also ran for another score, leading the Boilermakers to their first victory in Ann Arbor since 1966.
Purdue didn't get to a bowl game that season — a devastating succession of four consecutive losses by two, seven, three and six early in the year and then a three-point loss late to Michigan State sealed it — but Elliott finished with 3,026 yards passing, 22 touchdowns and completed 62 percent of his passes.
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