Iowa receiver Brodell is done for season
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By Eric Page | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 |
IOWA CITY — The Iowa football team’s No. 1 wide receiver will miss the rest of the season because of an injury suffered in Saturday night’s 17-13 loss to Wisconsin, coach Kirk Ferentz said Tuesday.
Andy Brodell tore his left hamstring early in the first quarter of Saturday’s game, falling to the ground as he broke past a Badgers cornerback on a pass route. He was helped off the field and did not return.
After the game, Ferentz called the injury severe. Tuesday, he confirmed the severity.
“He tore it, so it’s not good,” said Ferentz, whose Hawkeyes (2-2, 0-1 Big Ten) will carry a two-game losing streak into Saturday’s homecoming game against Indiana (3-1, 0-1).
Brodell, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound junior, has been Iowa’s second-leading receiver this season, having caught 13 balls for 96 yards. He has been most dangerous on punt returns, though, where he has averaged 14.4 yards a try.
Bettendorf’s Colin Sandeman, a freshman, will take Brodell’s place as starting receiver and return man.
The 6-1, 195-pound Sandeman has played in all four games and has three catches for 46 yards, including a 22-yarder in a 35-0 win against Syracuse. He has returned four punts for 61 yards — three for 26 yards after Brodell went down in the Wisconsin game.
“Colin came in and did a nice job for us,” Ferentz said Saturday.
Brodell’s was one of many injuries Ferentz had to update Tuesday.
Starting tight end — and Iowa’s leading receiver — Tony Moeaki will be out two to four weeks because of a dislocated left elbow and a broken bone in his left hand. Ferentz said it would be “optimistic” to think Moeaki would be back in less than a month.
The loss of Brodell and Moeaki leaves an already thin corps of pass catchers looking for volunteers.
Backup quarterback Arvell Nelson, an athletic, 6-4 redshirt freshman, will work fulltime with the receivers this week. He played some receiver on the scout team last year.
“He’s caught the ball and enjoys it,” Ferentz said. “And being a quarterback, he knows the plays.”
Starting outside linebacker A.J. Edds, who Saturday had an interception and forced a fumble, is a last-resort possibility at tight end, where junior Brandon Myers will start and be backed up by sophomore walk-on Tyler Gerstandt, the star of the Hawkeyes’ spring scrimmage this past April.
The loss of Brodell is significant. Though he’d gotten off to a slow start this season, he was Iowa’s only proven receiver, having torched Minnesota and Texas in back-to-back 159-yard performances to close his sophomore campaign.
Sandeman will start opposite redshirt freshman James Cleveland, who had four catches for 77 yards against Wisconsin. Derrell Johnson-Koulianos, who had a spectacular, one-handed 21-yard touchdown catch in Saturday’s loss, Paul Chaney Jr. and sophomore Trey Stross fill out the depth chart. Stross has missed the past three games because of a hamstring injury, and he might be at full strength this weekend.
Regardless, that’s a very different lineup than the one the Hawkeyes brought into fall camp. Since then, they’ve been met with the arrests of Dominique Douglas and Anthony Bowman, who are serving indefinite suspensions, and now, the season-ending injury to Brodell.
“Going into this year, we knew we had a deep receiving corps, and we’ve lost the most guys at the position,” said quarterback Jake Christensen.
“I’ve always been confident in them. They make plays everyday in practice. They got a chance to show it on the field (against Wisconsin), and they did a good job. My confidence in them has never wavered. I’m confident they’re going to make plays the rest of the year, and that’s what we expect from them.”
Which, once again, brings about the importance of the Hawkeyes’ mantra.
“The ‘Next Man In’ isn’t just an award we give out at the end of the year,” Stross said. “It’s something we’ve built our program on, something we really believe in.”
Eric Page can be contacted at (563) 383-2277 or epage@qctimes.com. For more on the Hawkeyes, log on to Hawkmania.com.
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