BREECE & BROCK / Iowa State Cyclones Offense Spring Preview

[Music] in a time when college football may be losing some national popularity and a lot of criticism focusing on the elite locking down college football this is a program this is a story this is a situation that makes people feel good definitely a feel-good story in college football iowa state's ascension to the top of the big 12. we got levi stevenson on the line from wide right natty light it's the sp nation platform for the cyclones levi how you doing today i'm doing great it's always a good day to be a cyclone especially good right now i like that motto it's good stuff well this football program uh before we dive into the personnel breakdown of this 21 roster uh just you've got to be elated i know that you wanted a big 12 championship and you came about 30 yards shy of one or maybe an ill-advised pass down the right sideline late in that game in a comeback effort against oklahoma and the sooner still own the conference but my goodness everybody is raving about iowa state and the job that matt campbell has done and we've had you on in previous seasons in which i know one of my questions to you was campbell's done a great job lifting this from two and ten three and nine to seven and five eight and four but taking that next step then you start to have to really knock off consistently some some really you know top 15 to 25 teams in the country can they do that because there was about a three season uh stint there where they kind of stalled at that or leveled off at that seven to eight win uh range but it seems as though uh campbell's been able to break through that well and one and part of the thing you gotta remember too though is that three season kind of stall out at eight eight wins you gotta remember it came after i mean that was his second third and fourth seasons with the program so it's not like it's not like he'd been here for 10 years and then stalled out so much is that because you have there's there's a thing that we that iowa state fans found out um when we played notre dame in the camping world bowl a couple years ago or two you know two decembers ago um is that the difference between four five four five wins and seven and eight wins is a lot smaller than the gap between eight wins and ten wins there's a the the what you have to do to go from eight to ten wins or eight to eleven wins or nine to eleven wins or whatever is that gap it may it only seems like one or two wins but what you have to do to break to bridge that gap is so much more than going from four to eight wins or four to seven wins or whatever it is so iowa state you know through virtue of a couple good good hits and recruiting and just being a better team if it just did oversimplify you know executing better not turning the ball over as much doing kind of the the basic the fundamentals well that can take you from four and eight to eight and four but to go from eight and four up to getting nine or ten wins that's a different ball game and that's why that's what iowa state found out against notre dame because notre dame even though that year they were maybe you could call them maybe a chad down that year i think they were still a 10-win team or something like that going into that game um and no but notre dame especially recruits but in in where they really shine is their offensive line and defensive line they're really really really good in the trenches and what iowa state found out is that you can have really really great skill talent on the outside you can have a quarterback and a running back that can compete with anybody but if you can't play down low in the trenches you're going to get blown out by the by the really good teams that can do both that have really good skill town and ken and have very very good offensive and defensive lines so one of the things that iowa state did to take that next step forward was as the kind of the rumor or the story goes or whatever is basically as soon as they got back in ames matt campbell fired the original str fired the strength and condition coach and hired in uh dave andrews from pittsburgh with the specific intention this has been last like january when they got off the plane back from orlando and since then i mean you saw we could see it this past offseason i would say it's offensive line was very good they were really good they gave brees hole a lot of brace hall a lot of running room they kept brock purdy off his butt um and he was i mean he was a lee sacked quarterback and certainly the big 12 and maybe one of the least sad quarterbacks in the country i mean he just he didn't have to deal with it very much and part of that is virtue of the offensive line and virtue of the offensive scheme and getting the ball out of his hands quickly and all that kind but you know when you have one of the least sac quarterbacks in college football paired that up with one of the nation's leading rushers the offensive line is doing something right and they're doing something right against some good defensive lines like oklahoma and oklahoma state and west virginia so you're seeing iowa state is trying is using that to punch through they're using um the offensive line and the defensive line to really push them up uh above that eight win mark so they can get into the nine ten eleven win category and really start pushing for conference championships playoff appearances so levi let's uh start right there i rarely go with the offensive line to start out the personnel conversation but you took us there and it draws me back to conversations we've had in the past where we have discussed the offensive line and that being key to the development of the entire program right so how does the personnel stack up for 21 well coming back you know you have four of your five uh four of your five original starters coming back now trevor downing was a starter to begin the season but was hurt most of the season he played the first game and he got hurt during the first game against louisiana and and then uh didn't play the rest of the season um though the offensive line um still performed well without him he's still objectively the best you know maybe maybe aside for colin newell the center uh trevor downing may be he's probably the best lineman in the entire group so you'll have him back you'll have colin newell back um you'll have you'll have you know basically your original starters from last year so you have joey ramos probably on one side and maybe uh for that other tackle spot maybe jake remsburg who played quite a bit last season could see grant treber any one of those guys that offensive line room is very deep now they've got lots of really good young guys they're going to be good for a while trevor downing is only a he'd be a redshirt sophomore since they would have redshirted him last year um he'd be a redshirt sophomore coming in he's already played a bunch of games that offensive line is you know it's going to be very good next year it's going to be every bit as good as it was last year it should be i should say um and they're having they've got pretty much everybody back from a group that led you know that ran in front that would help bruce hall become one of the nation's leading rushers and you know brock probably one of the least sack quarterbacks in the country so levi it doesn't appear based on what you've just run down that two of your top recruits in the 21 class tyler morrow and jim bonifas are going to be necessarily needed this fall they won't play i would be very it would take a catastrophic number of injuries for them for those guys to play and that's good because those those are good recruits those are good offensive line recruits uh that you know for for iowa state and you know a recruits that under paul rhodes may play really early in their career right now they don't need to you can sit a guy out you can you can just plunk him down uh on the on the red shirt list and be totally fine with it and you're not going to worry about it at all so those guys i would be outside of garbage time and using their four redshirt games i would be very very surprised if either of them played this fall seneca wallace comes to mind alan lazard comes to mind as being national stars at iowa state yep and those are those meaning national stars for people that follow college football they're popping up on the radar across the country as opposed to just the biggest absolutely yeah reece hall may have broken into that stratosphere of the guy that that that just your typical sports fan sure knows that that's really not locked into college football just you know watches the big games bruce hall's that good and finally has gotten the acclaim and uh and is still receiving the acclaim after 21 touchdowns 23 touchdowns total 23 catches in a 14-game season in which he would have played with the conference championship game in the postseason game in a regular season you're talking about pushing 2000 yards of total offense uh well what can you say about this guy that hasn't been said he's really i mean he's really special um he's the interesting you know so before this we had dave montgomery so dave montgomery was kind of just right below the the level star you were talking about people that pay attention to college football knew who dave montgomery was but if you were you know if you were just a casual fan you might not or a breaks hall is starting to it's starting to bust through that a little bit um bruce hall it has a lot of the same skill sets that david did really just otherworldly vision he's really tough to bring down he's a good runner but what bruce hall has that dave montgomery didn't have or or his le or elise didn't have until apparently this past season with the bears um is he didn't really have the top end speed that you need to really bust off the long runs where david would get 25 30 yard runs then kind of get forced out of bounds or get caught from behind or whatever it is breeze doesn't get caught from behind anymore he led the country thus last year in 50 plus yard touchdown runs and when you have when you have iowa state when you have a when you have a quarterback like brockport you have all those tight ends you have the receiver you have a line that's doing a really good job but then you also have one of the most talented backs in college football that you can pair up with that that's really difficult to stop especially when you have an offense like iowa states that um it doesn't really try to do anything super it doesn't try to do anything cute doesn't do anything kind of weird and they kind of take up a pseudo like a kind of a hybrid of a big 10 big 12 approach to this where they're going to try to beat you like they i would say knows what they're good at and they're just going to beat you with it kind of like kansas state did for a long time under bill snyder everybody knows what kansas state's going to what they're going to do they're going to run run run run run the ball and then we're going to get a few deep passes here and there but they were going to run lots of options with the quarterback things like that but and everybody knew it but nobody could stop them because they're really really good at executing and that's what i was states doing you know when you watch if you watch iowa state weekend and we out you can pretty much kind of predict what they're gonna do on a lot of plays if it's third and sixth they're probably throwing a sticker out to charlie kohler that's just what's gonna happen if it's third and two they are giving it to brace hall in an inside zone and they and i would say just dares them to beat them they dares they dare the other team to out execute them and it's real it's really entertaining to watch because they're not doing it through any sort of like weird offensive scheme like coastal carolina did that's not to discredit coats of carolina because it's still a good team but part of their part of their magic and part of the reason they caught a lot of people off guard is because their offensive system is kind of it's kind of weird and it's kind of it's unusual to defend it doesn't show up like anywhere else so they have something they have something that other people don't whereas iowa state doesn't really have anything that nobody else has you know that's a it's not from maybe kind of this combination of talent everywhere um especially at the tight end spot but they out execute people they don't turn the ball over they are one of they've been one of the least penalized teams in college football for the last five or six years they don't you know they really generally don't beat themselves so it's it's a really interesting thing to watch and bruce hall is part of that if you watched if you watch them in any of the games this year you know there was times where the tight ends of the wide receiver xavier hutchinson has a good game who do they go back to when they need to when they need a touchdown when it's third and two on the you know third and two next to the goal line who who they're gonna go to who are they gonna give the ball to maurice hall every time and he punched it in every time it can never be predicted that a guy's going to turn out to be as great a player as brees hall unless maybe he's a five star and he's the top guy in the board but typically those guys don't even turn out to be anything close to this right uh there's a question coming in uh regarding brees hall's recruitment and uh he was 22nd rated at the running back position in his class coming out of kansas he was a four star which typically iowa state doesn't bring in the four stars for as good as they are right now and is nationally acclaimed there are no four stars in the current recruiting class right so do you remember the recruitment of brees hall and how that came about and why they were able to reel him in yeah so that was an interesting one um he had he had some a pretty good offer list i'd have to look exactly who they all had offers from but towards the end really the the two or the two of the bigger schools that it came down to was us in iowa just like it was with jarrell brock the other the other you know borderline four-star running back from that class that i would stay pulled in uh at one point in time they were both ranked in the top 10 of their position i think they both the final rankings they slid down um but when they committed they were both in the top ten uh running backs for their class and there's there's an infamous photo that that has circulated the iowa state twitter sphere um of brees hall in an iowa uniform on his recruiting visit and uh so you know it came down to that and i know like our uh our friends at kansas state because he came he came out of wichita so i know our friends at kansas state were kicking themselves for not going after him a little bit harder um but breese hall it was it was kind of interesting it was a fairly quiet recruitment i don't there wasn't like anything i remember as far as like really tough battles coming down to the end for him it seemed like iowa state kind of had a lead early on and just you know just kind of kept just kept working it and it ended up working out all right um because he's just he's a kid that fits uh matt campbell's culture and his system perfectly guy that's really good between the tackles obviously his vision he's got the speed to push it outside but then his his off the field stuff too if you listen to the guy speak at all he's just he's matt campbell in a running back and that's a that's that's exactly what you want you want guy you want continuity within your program culture which is what matt campbell has worked very very hard to build and uh it's worked out and he's and he's bruce hall is a manifestation of that just like his predecessor dave montgomery talking iowa state football getting you set for the cyclone spring practice we got levi stevenson on the line you can hear the obvious insight and knowledge into iowa state of football so catch him and the rest of the staff there at wide right natty light on sb nations platform for isu and of course lock it in here at the voice of college football where we talk up the game we love each and every day brock purdy is a guy that's gained a wealth of experience it seems like he's been there forever at this point yeah almost a 67 percent passer last year 19 touchdowns and nine picks uh is there more ceiling space for him to reach oh most certainly um especially if you watched the early part of the season brock party really wasn't that great he was he was a treading water for the first few he was actually he was downright bad against louisiana tcu was a little bit better pretty efficient had the worst turnover in the history of sports if you want to see it he gets sacked and then inexplicably in the middle of the sack he was trying to throw it away but ended up essentially throwing it up in the air backwards and the tcu defender caught and ran in for like a 10 yard touchdown it was the worst turnover ever we don't have to rehash it it's just i'm jotting it down because i'm going to go look it up i'm sure you can do it on your own time i don't need to see it again but uh the worst turnover maybe i've ever seen in the college football game but otherwise other than that if not for that awful awful turnover generally pretty efficient oklahoma the oklahoma game he only completed like 50 of his passes um now that doesn't really tell the whole story he kind of it was one of those games where he just kind of made the plays that needed to be made to win he kind of it was kind of the winner quarterback as opposed to the really good efficient stat guy um he's just a guy that used shane falco from the replacement just kind of making uh just kind of making the plays he needed to make to win um and then you know as he as he kind of grew on a little bit he was really up and down up through you know then you get to the baylor game he throws three interceptions in the first half and i would say twitter what we nobody was like needing to bench this guy now but there was some rumblings like man i don't i don't know something's not right and then switch flips at halftime and all of a sudden he's and all of a sudden he's tom brady and he's going out there and he's doing everything he needs to do and iowa state comes back they win that game and then they go on this terror you know the next week they beat 45 they beat kansas state 45 nothing and then they go then they beat west virginia 42-6 and then they go then they go down to texas and they beat up then they beat texas in austin and then they come back and or sorry was it oh it's kansas state then texas and west virginia i should say 45 nothing kansas state go down to go down to austin beat texas at their place and then come back and be west virginia 42-6 and make it to the big 12 title game and the whole emmit the whole team especially but um but brock purdy in particular was really really good down that stretch and we saw and down that stretch we saw what brock party can be we saw what he what what really good brock purdy is um in in the context of that team it was you know make your make your good throws make good decisions to your tie downs to your receivers don't turn it over and give the ball to breeze that's what he needs to do brock purdy is a very outs he's a very good player if iowa state needs to lean on brock purdy they can he's he's perfectly capable of leading a team to victory just like he did his freshman season where there were some times where he just got him out same in same way in 2019 as well so he can be a guy that they can lean on but they don't have to you don't have when you have brace hall in a really good offensive line you don't have to lean on brock purdy so what that does is it gives him an opportunity to be really efficient make good decisions and don't turn the ball over that's really all he's got to do um so there's more there's a lot more ceiling if you can get if you can get you know the second half of baylor slash kansas state brock purdy for an entire season i mean you're talking about a french heisman candidate there i mean he's really really good when he's when he's just got to be more consistent about making good decisions and talk about really good and talking about really consistent charlie coolar has has seemingly been one of the best titans in college football if not the best and it seems like he's had like an nfl career because again it seems like it's been like five or six years that he's been talked about amongst the best tight ends in college football he caught a 44 last year seven touchdowns xavier hutchinson had the big numbers with 64 catches and i'm looking at a list of seven guys who caught at least 15 passes last year they spread it around and that and the amazing thing too is that you're talking about these guys have been here forever brock purdy technically because of the coveter is still a true junior charlie kohler still a redshirt junior bruce hall is still technically a true sophomore i mean i don't i don't think i would i would guess a lot of these guys will probably leave after this season since they have the a lot of them will have opportunities at the high at uh at the really high you know at the nfl basically especially bruce hall because he's young third year running back that's if you have a chance to go in the first couple rounds as a running back you you go um but but you're you're definitely you're totally right charlie kohler's been around forever and like i like i mentioned before is that i would say doesn't hide what they do they're really good with their tight ends and they use them a lot and they know that there's there are very few people in the big 12 and in college football that can really that can guard charlie kohler i mean you can stay with him he's not like supremely athletic like kyle pitts where he's like raised just where he's running past people but he has an ability to box people out and to uh to reel in especially like those the third and six sticky the stick routes on third and six to pick up first downs there's i mean if you throw if you throw the ball seven feet in the air charlie kohler is coming down with it whether you like it or not and if you don't and you still try to pass in here and still passing your fear him still probably gonna reel it in because he's huge and he has really really good hands and he's an exceptional route runner but the best part about what what makes iowa state dangerous is not just charlie kohler not just brice hall not just brock purdy but you have those guys in tandem and then you have like you mentioned xavier hutchinson too who really came on the scene i think he's primed for a a really big season next year and we can talk about him in a little bit too um but there's not just one tight end of diamond state there's three of them well last year there was three and then that will there will be you know charlie kohler and chase allen are both back and now you'll have a third one that'll slide into that f that efrol whether it's jared ruse or it's um or it's or an h back some people team's calling h back iowa state calls in an f um could be jerry roos could be desean hanukkah it could be easton dean who we've heard raving from on the coaching staff is easton dean it was that he was a quarterback recruit out of kansas and came here and dab chart got pretty full pretty quick so he converted to tight end and now we're hearing from the coaching staff that he could be better better than charlie and chase and so you know that's that's what they think and they were you know and it was funny because when when uh we first heard reports about bruce hall in camp during before his freshman season we were hearing reports of like briefs could be better than troy davis which if anybody is old enough to remember troy davis he was really really good first uh first running back to ever run for 2000 yards in back-to-back seasons heisman runner-up well his fifth place is his sophomore year and and uh second place his junior year to danny werfel um somehow still didn't win the dope walker that year don't don't know if we'll ever understand get the answer to that one but uh but i digress um but they were saying they thought he could be better than troy and so far i mean he's not going to put the yards up that troy did because he's not going to get 45 carries a game but look i mean he looks the part it looks every bit as good as troy if not if not better and i mean if you ask a lot of iowa state fans if they'd rather have troy or bruce hall right now most of them would tell you bruce hall so their talent evaluation is has been very very good this whole since they've been here their talent evaluation has been exceptional between finding dave montgomery you know he was a low three star guy you know finding mike rose out in the middle of ohio someplace and you've got breese hall and this is kind of iowa state didn't end up and didn't end up with him um but matt campbell actually extended an offer to eventual five-star quarterback in michigan recruit is it jj mccarthy um yeah iowa state offered him back in like eighth grade or something like that i mean the the eye for talent that matt campbell has is really exceptional um and if he's telling me that easton dean's got a chance to be better than charlie kohler and chase allen then i'm fully on board and i'm ready uh and i say uh yeah i know if you're anybody here is a religious person before i say a prayer for the rest of the big 12 linebackers i have to cover that guy i don't you might they could probably use it