Iowa football: Three things that went wrong vs Purdue Boilermakers
By Andrew Wade
The youth movement caught up to Iowa
To be honest, this was bound to happen. The Iowa football team was playing with fire by starting two true freshman at the cornerback position despite an (apparently) healthy Michael Ojemudia, who began the season as the starter and performed well in my opinion.
The freshman duo of Julius Brents and Riley Moss did a fantastic job through their first four games as starters.
In fact, Brents has been one of the best corners in the nation. According to Pro Football Focus, he has been the second best corner in the nation in yards per snap allowed.
There have been 189 FBS cornerbacks who have logged at least 125 snaps in coverage in 2018.
— PFF College (@PFF_College) November 2, 2018
Of them, David Long has allowed the fewest yards per snap spent in coverage this season. pic.twitter.com/qi4TF7ut8o
This was a little bit more expected from Brents, a four-star recruit from Indiana, but Moss, a two-star non-scholarship recruit was the surprising story. Although he has been picked on a little bit here and there (most notably against Minnesota) he has held his own in the Big Ten thus far.
Purdue changed that, but not in the way any of us anticipated.
Heading into the game, I fully expected the main weapon at wide receiver to be electric freshman Rondale Moore, who we said before the game was one of the three people Iowa needed to stop to win the game. Kirk Ferentz even talked about the importance of bottling this guy up. Kudos to Iowa’s defense because they did stop Moore (six catches, 31 yards), but on the flip side, two relatively unknown wide receivers decided to have career days.
Terry Wright, a senior transfer that had 44 total catches in his Purdue career heading into this game went off for six catches, 146 yards, and three touchdowns.
Isaac Zico, another junior college transfer, had 30 total catches in his Purdue career and went off for five catches, 74 yards, and one touchdown.
Hat trick for Terry Wright. Riley Moss is getting brutalized. Wright came into this game 15 catches for 200 yards and two TDs. Today? He's 6 for 146 and three TDs. He's been targeted 7 times. Purdue leads 35-23 with 2:26 left in the third.
— Marc Morehouse (@marcmorehouse) November 3, 2018
Most of these touchdowns came at the expense of Riley Moss, and Iowa fans were quick to jump on the young player. I don’t disagree that he had a bad game, but this is kind of on the Iowa football coaching staff for leaving him for three quarters of the game. Furthermore, the kid has only seen meaningful action in a handful of college football games. This was bound to happen at some point. It’s unfortunate though that it arguably came at one of the worst times.