In the third quarter of Iowa State’s opening 28-20 loss against Northern Iowa last Saturday, the ISU offense sputtered and stalled in the red zone, leaving points on the field that potentially cost the team the game.

After watching plenty of film, ISU quarterback Sam Richardson saw where his mistakes were made in the second half and in those red zone opportunities, leaving costly points on the field.

“You can point your finger at one thing or another on every one of those plays, but it’s something that we’ve tried to focus on as an offense, and we got that one touchdown in the red zone early, and that’s something we’ll have to continue,” Richardson said, donning a boot on his right foot for precautionary reasons. “Our main focus is to finish drives and that’s something we definitely didn’t do well last Saturday.”

In the early part of the third quarter, during what looked to be the drive leading to an equalizing score, two Jeff Woody runs and a Sam Richardson scramble led to Iowa State’s first breakdown for relief kicker Cole Netten’s first career field goal.

Then after a Deon Broom-field forced a fumble on the first play of UNI’s next possession, the Cyclones had it’s chance to take the lead, but went to a straight three-and-out where Netten punched through his second field goal and Iowa State’s last points of the game.

Bye week health

An early bye week in the season was dubbed “frustrating” by Richardson, but ISU coach Paul Rhoads knows this bye week is much to the benefit of his banged up team. Especially after the first loss in an opener Iowa State has had since Rhoads took over.

“If we’d have won the football game I’d rather be playing and getting into the next week, but we didn’t so we’ll take advantage of what we have,” Rhoads said.

Rhoads also mentioned that if Iowa State were playing in a game this Saturday, potentially three starters on offense could be missing from the game.

Along with Richardson in a boot, center Tom Farniok sprained his MCL in the second quarter and tight end Ernst Brun missed the entire second half with cramps.