Iowa football: Peyton Mansell no longer listed on two-deep depth chart

The Iowa football team’s depth chart for their game against Iowa State has been released, and like usual, there are a few takeaways.

Every week the Iowa football team releases a depth chart for the upcoming game. While mostly set in stone, things can change over the course of the week as we saw last week when Kaevon Merriweather suffered a foot injury late in the week that required him to not participate in the beatdown of Rutgers.

Injuries aside, not much is going to change from today until Saturday, which provides us a bit of insight into which direction players are moving up or down the playing time ladder.

The first takeaway from the new depth chart is that it appears Spencer Petras is firmly the number two quarterback. Yes, I know he has been number two for other two games, but the fact that Peyton Mansell is not included on the two-deeps is telling about the Hawkeye’s coaching staff excitement for the redshirt freshman Petras.

Against Rutgers, Petras got an opportunity to take a few snaps. He went just 3 of 6 for 8 yards, but he didn’t play poorly, especially for a kid who has had less than 50 snaps of collegiate football.

Outside of the quarterback position, one player we continue to watch out for is Cole Banwart, last year’s starting guard, who has been listed on the two-deep to start the season despite being injured. Heading into the Miami of Ohio game, the right guard position was listed as Levi Paulsen OR Cole Banwart signifying a two-person battle.

Paulsen got the start as Banwart was still unable to go, and in game one, Alaric Jackson went down causing some reorganizing of the offensive line group. Paulsen moved over, Kyler Schott moved from left guard to right guard, and true freshman Justin Britt stepped in as the backup right guard. Last week, Kirk Ferentz thought Cole Banwart would be available to play so I can only imagine that notion is getting stronger by the week, but Banwart is now listed as the backup center behind the redshirt freshman sensation Tyler Linderbaum.

I don’t think this is a case of Banwart doing anything wrong, but the Iowa football philosophy is “next man in”, and when that next man in performs well as Kyler Schott has, the Hawks have to go with the hot hand.

Outside of that, there are not too many crazy changes from last week to this week as the Iowa football team prepares to take on the Iowa State Cyclones this Saturday.