Heygood doesn't rest on defense

HAD ANTHONY Heygood come along during the Jim Colletto coaching era at Purdue (1991 through '96), there's at least a chance he might have developed into another Mike Alstott - the big, bruising fullback who ran between the tackles and rushed for a school-record 3,635 career yards the old-fashioned way, by leaving cleat marks on would-be tacklers' chests. And even if Heygood wasn't destined to be cast as the featured running back, well, you'd have to think he would have made a fine lead blocker for some whippet-fast tailback.

But Colletto went 21-42-3 and was replaced by Joe Tiller, whose idea of football travel runs more to Lear jets than Mack trucks. So the 6-2, 230-pound Heygood, who had rushed for 1,272 yards and 18 touchdowns as a senior at Cardinal O'Hara in 2003, found himself out of place at Purdue. There isn't much call for power-running fullbacks in the one-back, pass-heavy spread offense favored by Tiller.

Heygood, who had nine carries for 36 yards as a redshirt freshman in 2005 and four carries for 10 yards in 2006, took stock of the situation and decided he needed to be on the field more than he had been as a backup running back and special-teams player. So he went to Tiller in the middle of last season and volunteered as a candidate to play linebacker.

Midseason position switches are not necessarily rare. Penn State (6-3, 3-3 Big Ten), which hosts the Boilermakers (7-2, 3-2) Saturday in Beaver Stadium, regularly shifts players around in an attempt to maximize its personnel. But seldom does that sort of experiment work so well, so fast.

This season, Heygood has emerged as a force for the revitalized Purdue defense, ranking third on the team with 48 total tackles, 30 of them solos, and an impressive 11 tackles for loss.

"He's done a good job of adjusting,'' Tiller said of Heygood, who had been ranked as the No. 20 high school running back in the nation by Rivals.com coming out of O'Hara. "He enjoys the contact part of it. Really, if he had stayed at running back, he would be more of a fullback-type guy than a tailback type. Those are the type of individuals that excel as linebackers, so it's really not a surprise to us that he's played as well as he has.

"I don't know if it would be completely accurate to say he's our best linebacker at this time, but he's played well in his first full year as a linebacker. Next year he'll be a heck of a player at the position.''