After just 1 catch in Iowa's first 9 games, Iowa's biggest WR recruit in a decade had a breakout performance against Rutgers, tripling his career production in just 1 single game.
While I've seen silly speculation on what prompted the breakout performance, from "finally learning the system" to "gaining confidence," I have yet to see anyone anywhere note the obvious. Brown's big game happened for one reason..."smilin stone hands" Vines got hurt. It allowed Brown to actually play rather than sit on the bench behind a 2 star who can't catch (but had the all important "experience in the system"). Brown didn't suddenly learn how to play WR...he was simply given the opportunity to play out of default.
This has been an age old problem with Ferentz coached teams. Guys are named starters in week 1, and then become entrenched as starters regardless of how badly they play. The same for Spencer Petras (3 yrs) and now Deacon Hill. Backups are an afterthought regardless of the starter's performance. Imagine if Hill went down and Lainez finally got to play and played well. While the media would attribute his sudden success to "finally learning the system" or "gaining confidence," the fact is no one will ever know how well he can play in a game because he's never even been given the opportunity to take a snap.
It's never good to root for injuries to your own team. However, it weren't for Vines injury, Brown would still be ripe for transferring out of the program (like Charlie Jones did), there would be zero optimism in Iowa's offense going into next week, and Vines likely would have added 2 more drops to his resume last week. Perhaps if Hill were to get the flu this week, we might find out that Lainez is a stud. We might know what it's like to have a mobile QB who can escape the rush AND throw accurate passes. Barring an injury to Hill, we won't find out this year and we're not going to find out next year either.
