Iowa football: Five observations in win over Purdue

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IOWA CITY, IOWA- OCTOBER 19: Defensive end A.J. Epenesa #94 and defensive back Geno Stone #9 of the Iowa Hawkeyes walk off the field together following their match-up against the Purdue Boilermakers on October 19, 2019 at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa. (Photo by Matthew Holst/Getty Images) /

Shake-ups in the return game

Did you all have the same reaction I did when Geno Stone fair caught a punt return?

I was just confused. I figured if it wasn’t going to be Nico Ragaini, then it would be Ihmir Smith-Marsette, but there Stone was. And at first, I thought there must be a defensive reason for this. Maybe Iowa saw something on tape that made them concerned about a fake punt, and they wanted to have Stone back there as a returner and the last defender in the secondary.

But then Max Cooper got into the fold as a return man.

So that threw that logic out the window.

What happened to Nico Ragaini? He wasn’t injured considering he was on the field for the offense. What happened to Ihmir Smith-Marsette who was originally slated to return punts?

And then to top it off, I felt like kick return was also handled awkwardly. On one kick, Ihmir Smith-Marsette caught a bullet kickoff and fair caught it, but then later on in the game he caught the kick and just ran straight into the coverage and went out of bounds at the 19.

Even Kirk was a tad upset about the return game saying this in yesterday’s press conference.

"We must have had a lack of communication on the kick return, I thought it was a returnable ball and we fair caught it, but that’s one more thing we better get cleaned up."

I was really expecting a lot from the return game, but so far, I have been confused and unimpressed.

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