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Opening Statement
Good afternoon. Certainly Saturday was a magical day/night for everybody involved here and a special stage for our guys to compete. Very proud of the way they weathered the many challenges that came up during the game. And we looked at the film. I think it verified that the guys played with outstanding effort and it also showed a lot of perseverance. So really proud of our football team.
And since then happy to see Matt Hankins get recognized Big Ten Player of the Week on defense. We are happy for him.
And he got the pick there at the end of the game, but I thought that fourth down stop was really illustrative of how our guys played on defense.
Then certainly for Tory Taylor to be recognized by the Ray Guy folks, that's special as well. His plus-50 punting was just outstanding. Hit that first one, went in the end zone but after that, whatever it was, I think five inside the 10 and then one on the 12. So just great, great effort there.
Certainly a great effort by the whole unit. As I said, Terry Roberts, Ivory Kelly-Martin doing a good job with the coverage down there.
Big picture right now, these seasons are long and they're difficult, and there's going to be a lot of difficult steps along the way. Certainly Saturday was one of those challenges and it was really a good moment certainly for our team. And also want to say thanks again to our fans. It was an unbelievable environment. And talked to several people that night and then get messages from other folks and heard several people say they thought that was as good as they've ever heard it. These are people that have been coming for a long time so I wouldn't certainly wouldn't disagree with that. It was a great environment for us.
So that's all behind us now. Now we shift our attention to Purdue. And got the same four captains this week moving forward. Tyler Linderbaum, Matt Hankins, Jack Koerner, and Spencer Petras.
On the injury front, mixed emotions. Not happy that Ryan Moss injured, but the good news is I think we'll get him back here a couple weeks. So there is no surgery involved. That's always a good thing. Just to clarify further some confusion on that. The injury took place during the play. It seemed like somebody went off on a tangent there and that's not correct. It did take place on the play.
So that part's hard but nonetheless it's part of football and good that he'll be back with us soon.
Shifting our attention forward now, we have a big week in front of us and it's a big challenge playing Purdue. We have a seven-week block. Talked about that during the course of the year and this is the last week of that seven and there's only five days left and we're playing a team that's, A, going to be obviously a big challenge for us matching up with them. They're coming off their bye week so they're going to be rested and I know they will be ready to go.
And in a nutshell Coach Brohm's done a great job at Purdue. You look at them right now, they have had a personality offensively from the day he got there. That's his background. Certainly it shows up in many, many ways.
They have got a new defensive coordinator and pretty much a new defensive staff and it's really paid dividends. They clearly have an identity, done a good job there.
So if you look at it, and the other part is we haven't had a lot of success against Purdue certainly, so that's on our minds as well. Have to play a little bit better to have a chance here.
Offensively like you would expect, they're aggressive, play a high tempo, and really do a great job throwing the football. That's what they love doing. They do it extremely well and do it a lot of different ways. It seems like every week it seems like we're saying we're facing somebody who is challenging in their receiver core and we got another big challenge here. They have great size at their receivers, experience. And David Bell is one of the best players that I've seen in quite some time. We certainly haven't had much luck defending him. He's playing at a real high level, once again, predictably there. So that's going to be a challenge for us.
The defense, they have a new system. They certainly have an identity that's paid off for them. Look at all the categories that count defensively right now in the conference and they're right up at the top 3 basically in everything that's really important. So it's going to be a challenge. And then they have bolstered their teams on special teams, have a new punter and a new kicker and they're both doing very, very well too.
They have a good football team and it's another tough Big Ten contest for us and we need to do all we can to be ready.
Our kid captain this week is Ayden Gendreau from Camanche. Ayden is a guy who has had several surgeries in his career, during his time in his career. As a 12-year-old, had heart and spinal surgeries, but he's doing great right now and even active in sports. So certainly it will be good to have him with us.
We're certainly counting on a great environment in Kinnick. We'll take all the help we can get there. But we still have to play the game. And, for our football team, all that matters right now is, between now and Saturday, all the little things we do to try to make sure we're ready to go when kickoff comes around.
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