Iowa football: Stopping Purdue’s offensive trio key to winning Saturday’s game
By Andrew Wade
DJ Knox
DJ Knox, the junior running back from Georgia, has been an explosive playmaker for the Purdue offense. Through eight games, he is averaging 6.5 yards per carry on 110 carries, which is the 28th best yard per carry average in the nation overall and the fifth best for players with more than 100 carries.
Last week, against the best rushing defense in the nation, Knox still managed to average 7.3 yards per carry. For some reason, however, the Purdue coaching staff went away from him and he only received seven carries total, which is a noticeable trend this season.
Purdue has lost four games this year, and three of those games, Knox has had less than ten carries. Only once has Knox received more than ten carries and Purdue lost and that was the Eastern Michigan game, which is just sort of an asterisk on an otherwise solid season.
In Tuesday’s media conference, Kirk Ferentz alluded to how dynamic DJ Knox is.
"He’s just a really good player, and he plays on special teams, too, which is impressive. I don’t know how many guys that are doing what he’s doing offensively are like running down on kickoffs, but that tells you a little bit about his attitude and his toughness, that type of thing."
He will be facing another tall task as he goes against the nations third best rushing defense with the Iowa football team, and when compared head to head against Michigan State, Iowa’s run defense is actually better.
Against Michigan State, Penn State running back Miles Sanders had 162 yards on 17 carries for a 9.5 yard average. Against Iowa, Sanders only had 62 yards on 17 carries.
The Iowa football team has shown they are capable of stopping elite running backs in the Big Ten. Let’s see if they can do it for another week.