If everyone is boiled down to their most emphatic skill, Kam Thomas is going to be known for his speed.

He can do this without pads:

• A sub-7 second 60-meter dash
• A sub-11-second 100-meter dash
• A sub-50-second 400-meter dash

That's lightning touching down speed. Blink, and it's gone speed. That speed that makes a casual observer say, out loud and to no one in particular, "Shooooo that man is fast" – that's what Kam Thomas has.

Football can be a brutal game. It can beat up even the toughest men, especially once you reach a certain point in the season – it can vary from player to player, but safe to say November is usually a time when everyone is nursing a few aches and pains. But to inflict this sort of punishment, you have to catch them first.

And nobody is catching Kam Thomas.

They haven't all season in the return game, where Thomas described his job as (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Make one guy miss and go." He's one of the few players at a traditional skill position who can impact the game without seeing the ball because, and this here is a dirty little secret no other team wants you to know and would deny with their hand on a Bible if pressed: absolutely no team wants to kick the ball to Kam Thomas.

They'll kick it short and give up field position. They'll boot it through the back of the end zone and guarantee the Govs a start on the 25-yard line. If the choice was to give up a guaranteed two points or kick it to Thomas and possibly surrender six, one suspects a team would happily have the punter turn and boot it out the back of his own end zone rather than let the speedster get the ball in any semblance of space.

Saturday, to their credit, Eastern Kentucky did nothing to tempt fate in the return game. They shied away from giving Thomas anything to do, kicking out of bounds or into the end zone or whatever they could to keep it away from him in the return game. The nation's leading punt returner didn't get many chances, muffing one punt and getting stopped before he got started on his only official attempt.

Oh no, the Colonels have stymied this incredible part of Austin Peay's return game, how shall a Scotty Walden offense cope with such a setback? 

Well, turns out there's more than one way to get Thomas involved in the game. The ritualistic observer of Austin Peay football has sensed this was coming for a few weeks: that the bubble screens were going to start finding space, that getting Thomas in motion for a pop pass or a swing out of the backfield was going to find him with a head of steam and only terrified defenders between himself and paydirt.

The Govs also used a different wrinkle to get him the ball in Richmond: turns out, if you tell the fastest guy to run by everybody, he can get pretty open that way. Football is such a simple sport sometimes.

"He's just such a stud," Walden said. "We try to get him a lot of touches, and the thing I wish we'd gone to earlier in the season is using him downfield a little more. We felt like we had a matchup tonight where he could make those plays, and he took advantage of it."

Against the Colonels, Thomas got open, stayed open, and is probably still open right this second if you need 15 yards to pick up a first down as part of your workaday job. Take the pieces of Thomas' day separately, and they all stand on their own.

Ten catches is a nice Saturday.

Two scores, obviously what you want.

204 yards receiving, the fifth-highest tally by a Gov in program history? Genuinely hurtful to the spirit of any secondary.

(I don't like dwelling on the past in this space because it appears certain segments of the college football cognoscenti are going to do that anyway and don't need my help, but I thought it was a helpful illustration that 19 catches, 253 yards, and two scores once led the Govs for a season. This was not in like 1954 either; that was in 2010. Thomas was another long reception away from being 2/3 of the way to that tally just on Saturday. It's never a bad time to talk about just how far we've come.)

The two scores were emblematic of what Thomas brings to the Govs. The first, he took off, two EKU defensive backs collided and Thomas blazed past the safety into the end zone. The second, Thomas took a comeback route with his back to the defensive back, pivoted right, broke a tackle, ran past some defenders, and juked an unfortunate few straight into the turf.

"What do they say, practice makes perfect?" Thomas said postgame. "We rep those plays that hit tonight, and that carried throughout the game. We control our destiny, we know what's at stake and we're chasing something bigger than a ring now."

Speed is hard to guard. Pure, blinding speed with hands is impossible. And the Govs have like four guys like this. Pick your poison; Saturday it was Kam Thomas, but this week it could be anyone.