Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - What is Purdue's game plan Saturday | Who replaces the injured Rondale Moore | What to expect from Iowa Saturday

Episode Date: October 17, 2019

With the Purdue game two days away, what should you expect from the Boilermakers and how will injuries play a big role in Saturday's game. Lastly, we cover what we expect from the Iowa Hawkeyes in this matchup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I thank God I was born on the good arms of the Midwest, and not on the battlefields of the U.S. It's a time of panic, and it's intercepted! It's picked off right away! Intercepted by Marty Hooker! Pick six! Eight seconds into the game! Buffen sets up deep in the pocket, goes down the field for Smith!

Oh! He's got it! Smith! Touchdown. 85 yards. High on. Touchdown, 10. Taking a shot in the end zone.

It is caught. No offense. Touchdown. That's either one or you have it. Go ahead and three. Yes. Two-point lead for the Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network.

I am one of your hosts, Andrew Waite. I am not joined here by Zach Cohen today. This week's been kind of a little bit interesting. Had a work conference, had some issues with my cell phone. So Zach and I have been trying to tag team this solo the entire week. Hopefully we'll be back recording together next week. Miss having him on the show. Hope you feel the same about me.

Otherwise that'd be a little bit awkward. But let's jump into it today. For the Thursday morning episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast, we're going to basically be giving a rundown of Purdue. What are some players you should be watching for? What are we expecting from Purdue? And kind of what my expectations are for Iowa versus Purdue in this game. Before we jump into some of those key pieces of the show today, make sure to like, review,

and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at, whether that is Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or the brand new Himalaya Podcast app. Also, make sure to follow us on social media. We have a Facebook account, a Twitter account, and an Instagram account. It is Thursday, which means I believe we have a hype video coming this week from Iowa Addict. Make sure to follow him on Twitter as well, at Iowa Addict. He does a fantastic job with our hype videos that we are posting on Twitter and on Instagram, so make sure to check those out as well. All right, though, let's jump into it. For today's episode, like I said, I want

to talk about Purdue. Historically, Purdue has been a team, at least in the last 30, 40 years, that Iowa usually beats pretty well, but in the last two years since Jeff Braum has taken over the program, it has been a different story. He has found a blueprint that works well against Iowa for a less talented team. Obviously, we know we're Iowa football fans, and I'd be surprised if you're not an Iowa football fan and you're listening to this podcast considering it is football season. We're in the heart of it. Iowa is 4-2 and halfway through their season. But the point is, you understand that most of the time when Iowa loses, they're getting out-talented, right?

When you're losing to a Penn State, it sucks. But Penn State has more talent than Iowa. Iowa predicates themselves. They do a great job typically, historically, of controlling the ball, running the ball, playing stout defense, using play-action passes. Obviously, we saw that be kind of ineffective the last two weeks with the bad interior offensive line play. But this allows Iowa to control the game against bad teams and to control the game against good teams. But some bad teams have found a way to exploit that.

Northwestern may be less talented, but they actually just out Iowa themselves. They're even more disciplined than Iowa has been in the past, and that's one of the reasons why Northwestern has been successful against Iowa. But Purdue the last two years has really relied on getting a lead early and getting big plays. And if there's one thing we've seen from the Iowa defense this year is that they are susceptible to one or two big plays. And if there's one thing we've seen from the Iowa defense this year is that they are susceptible to one or two big plays. I think what's important to know is that's not going to kill the team,

but we need an offense to score more than three points a game or more than 12 points a game like they did against Penn State. Now granted, Purdue's defense isn't nearly the same caliber as Penn State's or Michigan's, and their defensive line is definitely not to the standard of Penn State's. I think that is the one thing people are probably missing in this whole thing is we just faced two pretty solid defenses, and we just faced, in Penn State's defensive line, one of the better defensive lines in the Big Ten and in the nation.

So that's something that we should be keeping an eye on. But Jeff Brom even said it in an interview with the media, I believe on Monday, that he has been successful in beating Iowa. And the big thing for him is to get big plays, get chunk plays right away, get a lead, and force Iowa to react in a different way. Iowa prefers to have the lead first. They prefer to then control the clock. They run the ball.

They set up play-action pass. They do their offense. But when they get behind, and the more they get behind, they have to change their game. That's when you're seeing Nate Stanley throw the ball 40 or 50 times. And if there's one big complaint about Brian Ferenc, and to be fair, I've been tough on Brian Ferenc this past two weeks. I think he could have done a better job over the last two weeks. It's not completely all on him. But one of the things I think we've seen with Brian is that he's very quick to abandon things that aren't working.

And sometimes that can be a good thing. But I think sometimes you need to continue to press forward, right? With the rushing attack against Michigan, Torin Young would rip off an 8-yard run, 10-yard run. They'd come right back to it. Torin Young would get stuffed for negative one yards. Then they would stop running the ball and they'd start throwing again. And I think that's part, you know, he's still developing in this coordinator role.

He's only in his third year as an offensive coordinator. He's been learning, obviously, under a lot of great minds over the last 10 years. But even still, he's going to make mistakes. And I think one of the big things is that he's quick to abandon things that aren't working, maybe even too quick. And he can be a little bit hyper-reactive in certain situations, right? I mean, it's almost as if sometimes he's calling the plays as a fan, in a sense. You know, wow, if we got this, this would be a huge momentum shifter. He's a little bit, you know, ballsy, a little bit bit um you know swing for the fences type of guy on some place so it'll be interesting to see um how the offense

goes about this game especially if they're from they're playing from behind like jeff ron wants him to the one thing though to keep in mind with the purdue offense is that and in fact just the entire purdue team is that this team is decimated, absolutely decimated by injuries. They are missing a ton of guys. We thought Iowa was injured, right? I mean, and Iowa does have some injuries, but not nearly to the extent that Purdue does. And I'm going to get into that here in just a few moments. All right, let's cover the injuries.

What do you say? So Iowa does have some injuries. We've talked about this a's cover the injuries. What do you say? So, Iowa does have some injuries. We've talked about this a lot on the show. The big injury is that Cole Banward's out for the year. That is a tough break, especially considering coming into the season. We saw how well the guards were playing early in the season. We thought, well, if Cole Banward's coming back, there's only going to be so much depth. And it's going to be a very big-time strength for Iowa,

especially considering the last couple years, the interior offensive line hasn't been a strong point for the Hawks. Bammer went down. The line really struggled. Kyler's shot has also went down. That was a couple weeks ago before Bammer took his place. So now we're missing two guards, and we're trying to figure out what the hell to do with those two guard spots,

whether that is Mark Kallenberger, whether that is the Paulson twins, Cody Eentz, or even Justin Britt, who I think might get a little bit more of an opportunity, especially if people continue to struggle on the interior offensive line. On the Purdue side, though, right, and let me actually backtrack. From the defensive side, Christian Welch is good. He was a little bit banged up, but he's good to go. From a defensive back perspective, Julius Brents apparently is out again, which is interesting. Really isn't a major injury for the Hawks, I would say, at this point.

From a Purdue perspective, though, they are just getting screwed right now. They are missing their starting quarterback, Elijah Sindelar. Probably messed that up. Broken collarbone. They are missing Lorenzo Neal, a fantastic defensive lineman, a son of Lorenzo Neal, the fullback formerly known from the Chargers a while back, I believe. Marcus Bailey, also a big-time player who is a starter coming into the season. He is also out for the year, but the big one, and the one I really want to harp on today, is the fact that Rondell Moore is out. To be fair, I haven't seen a specific he is guaranteed out, but Jeff Braun basically said it's very unlikely

he practices this week and very unlikely he comes back for the game, and that is huge. Rondell Moore, if you are not familiar, is probably a, I don't want to be too ridiculous here, maybe a top 10 athlete in the nation. And I say athlete because he's a guy who can catch balls, he can return balls, he can run balls. Last year he caught, I believe, 114 passes for some ridiculous number. Actually, let me just pull it up so I can get it to you.

But he caught roughly 114 passes for 1,258 yards, 12 touchdowns. Also added 213 rushing yards on the ground in 21 attempts for a 10.1 average and two touchdowns in the return game. He returned 33 kicks for 662 yards and 12 punts for 82 yards. That's absurd. That's Amir Smith-Marset on steroids. He is out though. He is their best player. He's a guy who is going to be an NFL player and he's not going to be there. And I think that's really huge for the Hawks. They did do a good job of containing him last year though, but nevertheless, having a big guy like that forces

them to put attention onto him, which allows guys like Terry Wright from last year to go off for six catches, 140 yards, and three touchdowns. So that does allow the defensive to stay a little bit more balanced and not have to focus on one or two guys at the moment. A couple guys I want to make sure you're aware of, though. They're going to kind of step up in the place of Rondell Moore. The first guy is, ironically enough, David Bell. And if you are not familiar with Iowa Hawkeye recruiting, if you don't follow it as much, you know, there's some great sources for it. I know 24 seven sports is a really great job with, you know, David and those guys.

We also try to cover some of this stuff on dear old gold, trying to break down what our thoughts are, not necessarily breaking out the actual recruiting news. We get that from the guys from 24-7 Sports and Blair Sanderson and that kind of stuff. We try to give our breakdown on Daryl Gould. But if you aren't following recruiting, you wouldn't know this. David Bell was a guy who Iowa was heavily after, a four-star recruit out of Indianapolis at wide receiver. And as a true freshman, he is leading the team and receiving yards with 438. He's tied for first with three touchdowns. He's averaging 16.8 yards

per catch. So this is going to be huge to watch this play out on Saturday against Purdue when they take the field, when Iowa takes the field against Purdue at Kinnick Stadium. There's a couple other guys as well. Bryson Hopkins is their star tight end. This is one of the few times we've seen in the last couple years where Iowa's actually not having the advantage at the tight end position. Bryson Hopkins is a stud, 345 yards, about a 14.4-yard per catch clip. And then Ahmad Anderson has 16 catches for 226 yards and two touchdowns. So they have some guys who can fill in.

Also, out of the backfield, Jackson Anthrop has 25 catches. This will be something to monitor, especially with the mismatches that could be created by having multiple running backs in the backfield. The one nice thing that Purdue isn't able to do is run the ball. They have just one guy who's averaging over 3.4 yards per carry, and he only has seven carries on the season. So not exactly ideal. They do try, I'll give them that. King Daru, I think is his name, has 67 carries for 226 yards. So this would bode really well for the Hawkeye defense. Be able to stop, you know to stop the run and then worry about the pass.

They don't need to add extra guys in the box to stop the run like they will against Wisconsin. They'll be able to do that, hopefully with just their defensive line and some solid linebacker play. And then as Purdue tries to spread the field, hopefully we'll see the implementation of the 4-2-5 again. And I think we're bound to see that. Kirk Behrens touched on it on his Tuesday media conference, talking about the guys who are kind of rotating in and out what's going to happen, right?

And from my understanding, it sounds like we're going to have Hankins on one side, possibly Riley Moss at the other corner, and Ojemudia maybe taking in that slot position. We also could see Ojemudia stay outside and DJ Johnson come in that slot position or DJ Johnson taking the outside and Ojemudia sliding into the slot. So lots of options there for Phil Parker, but unlike previous weeks, unlike against Iowa State and even Michigan to an extent, and obviously against Penn State for the first half where KJ Hamler was going against some linebackers, we now have the depth back at secondary where we can bring in these defenses that are going to match up a little bit better with some of these more modern offenses, which I'm very excited about. I think this game is really going to be predicated down to can Jack Plummer handle the pressure?

And Jack Plummer is the quarterback for Purdue, a redshirt freshman. As I said earlier, Elijah Sindelar, their starter coming into the season, broken collarbone, I believe. Let me confirm that again. Yep, broken collarbone. So Plummer himself, registered freshman, not related to Jake Plummer, is from Arizona though. He's had a pretty solid season so far, completing just under 60% of his passes, just under a thousand yards. You know, that's going to happen though and produce offense. They like to air the ball out. How does he handle the crowd noise at Kinnick though out how does he handle the crowd noise at kinnick though how does he handle the atmosphere at kinnick and is kinnick going to get up for this i i have no doubt that they will but it's tough coming off a two-game losing streak especially

when you had such high expectations for how the iowa hawkeyes were going to play this year i can see how that can be tough but if the atmosphere is electric if it's crazy if it's tough you know i can see a redshirt freshman struggling in that environment. And with a solid run defense, having the ability to rely on our strong secondary to stop the air raid attack, I think there's a really good opportunity here for Iowa to get a pretty easy victory. Coming up, though, we're going to cover the defensive side of the ball and kind of what I expect to see from Iowa coming into this game.

Alright. Third and final segment of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. We're going to continue our discussion about Purdue. And what to expect from them as they play the Iowa Hawkeyes this weekend. We covered a lot on offense, right? I mean, they're going to try to air the ball out. They want to air the ball out. They want to get that lead and make Iowa play from behind. Defensively, they're an interesting team though. They're missing a lot of their key guys. They do have some strong players though on their team, led by Ben Holt, a transfer linebacker,

a guy who has 60 tackles, more than doubled the second closest guy, has one sack, two passes defended, and three and a half tackles for a loss. All-around player at the middle linebacker position. A guy who is going to be really important for the interior offensive line to make sure they get to that second level when they're trying to run block and allow holes to develop for Goodson, for Young, and for Sargent. Another guy, though, that I'm really kind of worried about at this point is George Karlaftis, obviously butchering his name, but a true freshman, a four-star recruit last year coming into the season.

He has 29 tackles, 9.5 tackles for loss, and four sacks. And this is not against competition that is weak. A lot of that production has come in the last three weeks against Big Ten production, or against Big Ten opponents, excuse me. And that means something to me. I mean, when you're playing Maryland, Penn State, Minnesota, and you're getting that kind of production, that's a big deal. Granted, those teams aren't supposed to have the offensive lines that Iowa has, even

though we've seen Iowa's offensive line just get absolutely slaughtered the last couple weeks. And then finally, that's kind of the big piece on the defensive side. Defensively though, this is not a great defensive team. They are allowing 29.8 points per game against them, which is 88th in the nation. That's kind of held up by, I would say, kind of a bad streak in general, but where they allowed 34, 24, 34, 38, 35. Just in general, this defense is not, I think, a strong point, which I think bodes well for Iowa to get back on track, get this offense ready to go, get the rushing attack back in order. As we get ready for more Big Ten play, we have Northwestern followed by Wisconsin.

This is a really key three-game stretch for the Iowa Hawkeyes, and they need a big win here. And we've seen in the past where they kind of let this game get away from them, even though they are the more talented team, even though they are favored, which I believe they are favored by 17 points, if I remember correctly. From a schedule perspective, Purdue is 2-4, like I said earlier, the first game they lost to Nevada. They beat Vanderbilt, not a very good SEC team, and then lost to TCU, Minnesota, and Penn State

before beating Maryland. And I honestly think Maryland's garbage, so I'm taking that with a grain of salt. But despite being 2-4, this is your standard Purdue team. They have some talent. They've been dealing with a lot of injuries. They have a great opportunity to upset the Iowa Hawkeyes because they're not coming in and playing Iowa football, right? Like I said, some of the teams like a

Northwestern can out Iowa, Iowa. Some of the teams like a Penn state, a Michigan, Ohio state, they can out talent, Iowa, a team like Purdue needs to do something different and that is going to be utilizing that air raid attack to destroy the Iowa secondary So I think you know it's gonna be a really interesting game It's gonna be basically can Iowa step up for this game. Can they get the monkey off their back? Can they get you know going again offensively we've seen the defense, you know, obviously be one of the best in the nation Can they stop this? you know not gimmicky, but this Big 12 type of offensive attack? And offensively, can they get it going?

Can they get the ball to their playmakers? Can they protect Nate Stanley? I mean, I've been giving Nate Stanley a lot of crap, but a lot of it is on the protection and the ability to stop that interior pressure for him so he can actually get some time to throw the dang ball. And then, you know, just can Brian Ferencz scheme the right guys open? Can he get the ball out of Nate Stanley's hand quickly? Can he use some short routes to get some confidence in the offensive line?

And are we going to see the offensive line gel? Are we going to see them actually play well together? I think that's one of the things lost in all this. Iowa's been shelving a lot of guys in. They also don't have a lot of continuity. And you see that in watching the game film, in that you'll see pass rushers come untouched. There's a stunt, and one of the guards takes the wrong guy,

and now we're double-teaming one guy and letting one other guy go free. We have five guys against four of their rushers, and we're not able to stop one guy because we're double-teaming the wrong people. And that comes down to communication and continuity and chemistry. So those would be some really big themes that I try to watch for in this game against Purdue. That'll cover it, though, for our Thursday morning episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. As always, I appreciate you all tuning in to this wonderful Thursday morning episode of the show. If you are a big fan of any other sports, make sure to check out our other podcasts on the network, MLB, NFL, other college

football teams. We have an NHL branch coming out right now. And then obviously NBA, which is how this whole thing started. So make sure to check those out and make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. We do have some more giveaways coming out. I think Zach is going to be dropping the winner of the Jordan Canzari giveaway here shortly. I know we've been teasing that for a while. He's having some issues with the generator, so we want to make sure we get that running so we can give this award out fairly to you all.

We are getting that self-autographed for you, and we'll be sending that to you once we pick the winners of that contest. And again, if you liked what you heard today, make sure to like, review, and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at, whether that is Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or the brand new Himalaya

Podcast app. And if you love the show, make sure to tell a friend, tell a family member, help us out, get some recognition so more people can listen to this daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes. That'll do it though, Hawkeye Nation. Have a fantastic day.

Have a fantastic day, Hawkeye Nation, and go Hawks!