Really, even dating back to spring football, Iowa just hasn’t had a full deck of cards. That continued throughout fall camp when the Hawkeyes began the season without talented wide receivers Nico Ragaini and Keagan Johnson.
Of course, Iowa has also had the following list of players suffer different season-ending injuries along the way from fall camp until now: offensive guard Justin Britt, cornerback Jermari Harris, linebacker Jestin Jacobs, and wide receiver Jackson Ritter.
For an offense that has again struggled mightily, getting Johnson back into the fold would be a welcome sight to team with wide receivers Ragaini, Arland Bruce IV, Brody Brecht and tight ends Sam LaPorta and Luke Lachey.
There was some good news last week as wide receivers Diante Vines and Jacob Bostick as well as defensive lineman Yahya Black were all in uniform last weekend.
Naturally, Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz is hopeful that his team’s bye week can help those players get back fully healthy and for others that have gone through the grind to this point to also recover.
“Yeah, that’s a decision I made a while ago, earlier in the week. Just how we were going to approach this week. That hasn’t changed. Losing tonight’s disappointing. I think the first thing we have to do—it has been 10 straight weeks of pretty rigorous football, so a lot of our guys get caught up physically is going to be hopefully beneficial.
“We’ll see what we can do to improve things and do what we can do coaching. See if we can coach a little bit better here in the last six weeks. So, we’ll stick with the plan. I mean, I think we have a good plan right now in working the younger guys a little bit more than the older guys. Try to be a better football team to get back at it again,” Ferentz said.
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