Starting corner Matt Hankins was injured in the Wisconsin game and may not play against Minnesota. Who are the Iowa football players in line to fill in?
True sophomore Matt Hankins was injured in Iowa’s loss to Wisconsin two weeks ago and despite the extra time to heal with the bye week, he may not be ready to go in Saturday’s contest against Minnesota. While not ideal, there are a few options on the Iowa football team that should be able to adequately fill in for the first-year starting corner, but they’re a little young.
Two of the three candidates to replace Hankins are true freshman while the other is a redshirt freshman. The front-runner for the starting gig if Hankins isn’t able to play is likely to be Julius Brents. Brents is a true freshman out of Warren Central in Indianapolis and was a four-star recruit in the class of 2018.
Against Wisconsin, Brents was the first one to jump in and take over for the injured Hankins which would make sense considering he is currently the #3 corner for the Iowa football team.
According to Kirk Ferentz in his Tuesday media conference though, it won’t just be Brents getting some action if Hankins can’t go. True freshman Riley Moss and redshirt freshman Josh Turner will also likely be in the mix for additional playing time.
Moss was a two-star recruit from Ankeny Centennial and didn’t hold an offer from any other Power-5 programs coming out of high school. Meanwhile, Josh Turner, was a former three-star recruit from American Heritage School in Florida.
When questioned whether Brents would be the next man up, here is what Kirk had to say.
"Probably would be. Could be Moss. Could be Turner. We’ll watch and see how this week goes."
He also added some more context to how both Brents and Moss have been doing since joining the Iowa football program.
"He’s [Riley Moss] on the rise. And Brents is on the rise. Both out there playing. They’re not the same but they’re similar in that they both pretty much have, since they got here, I think Julius might have had a bump first week at camp. But he’s pretty much been out there every day. Works hard. And Riley the same way. Good on special teams. High effort guys that have learned. And take advantage of their opportunities."
Regardless of which guy plays, we know that some young guys are about to get significantly more experience Saturday, but Kirk doesn’t seem to be worried. In fact, he made a good point that this is sort of the norm for the Iowa football team when it comes to corners.
"We’ve played a lot of freshmen corners historically. Mentioned Jovan. Go back, through the years. And we’ll see where it all shakes out. They’re all in the mix."
These freshman corners will be facing a true freshman quarterback when they take on Minnesota Saturday afternoon. Zach Annexstad is a walk on true freshman making his fifth career start for the Golden Gophers, and through four games has only threw two interceptions. It’s pertinent for the Hawkeyes to get after Annexstad in the pass rush and force some turnovers in the secondary for Iowa to emerge victorious. We’re about to find out if these young guys can step up the test.