The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com's weekly, obviously, column covering Purdue football, basketball and recruiting, as well as college sports issues, the true meaning of life, or whatever other topics might come to mind in a given week.

Rondale Moore is Purdue's headliner this weekend, as the NFL Draft takes place. Since 2018, that's been an inevitability, that the 2021 proceedings would be his moment.

But this is another Boilermaker's moment, too, that of one of the few success stories of Purdue's forgettable 2020 pandemic year: Derrick Barnes.

You may remember 2017, when Jeff Brohm and his staff had just moved to Purdue, and cobbled together a recruiting class heavy on under-the-radar players from Kentucky, one of them being the high school running back who broke a MAC commitment to take his shot at the Big Ten.

Since then, Barnes played outside linebacker, then essentially defensive end, then inside linebacker for Purdue, and now leaves as a desirable NFL prospect, stacking up very favorably with the excellent linebackers who've come before him, Ja'Whaun Bentley and Markus Bailey, as a pro prospect.

There's more to this story, though, then you're run-of-the-mill under-promising recruit over-delivering. It's what happened this season.