Three Thoughts is a new feature GoldandBlack.com will run every Monday morning in-season.

Hey, let's talk for a second about one of Purdue's more important players who hasn't been on the practice field a whole lot: DaMarcus Mitchell.

It was good news that the senior edge rusher has returned to the field after missing numerous practices due to what I guess we can call conditioning issues, but it wasn't exactly great news that those issues — serious as they could be — surfaced, to the point Purdue spent much of training camp without one of its two of three best defensive players, certainly one of its most gifted.