AMES — After a season full of injuries, the Iowa State linebacker and tight end rooms are getting healthy and are prepared to hit the spring season hard in preparation for the fall season in August.
Starting with the linebacker room, this was the one all season that got hit the hardest with the injury bug, as many starting-level linebackers such as junior Caleb Bacon, sophomore Will McLaughlin and freshman Cael Brezina were all out for an extended period of time.
While Bacon was the only one to get injured and not come back during the season, it forced the Cyclones’ hand in playing lesser, inexperienced linebackers in games they needed to win in order to potentially make the postseason.
However, the guys who filled in were able to do just that and then some, as linebackers such as sophomores Kooper Ebel, Jacob Ellis, Jack Sadowsky V, and freshmen Rylan Barnes and Beau Goodwin helped step in and play key roles in the linebacker room for Iowa State.
For a guy like Brezina, who was forced to play in only eight games last season, he saw his injury as an opportunity to coach up the younger linebackers so that when it came time for him to come back, he’d be playing alongside more experienced and more confident players.
“It’s awesome, just seeing guys be able to step up,” Brezina said. “Obviously you want to be the guy playing, but sometimes God’s plan for you is to be on the sideline, to be a coach for those guys and help them.”
Defensive coordinator Jon Heacock acknowledged that while the plethora of injuries in the linebacker room affected his defense, he also gave props to the guys who stepped in and helped keep the Iowa State defense stout and strong.
“Anytime that you lose the number of folks that we lost, with the severity of the injuries, is a battle,” Heacock said. “In all fairness, I thought the guys that were backing those guys up, you know, a couple of those guys that came from working scout team reps to all of a sudden being in starting roles, did incredible.”
Now, as the spring season arrives, along with the youth and experience that this room has, the linebacker room is looking forward to dominating the field, fully healthy and together as a unit.
“You look at the depth chart, there’s pretty much a three-deep of guys that have started in our defense and would start for most places,” Brezina said. “Being able to go in there and compete will make all of us better.”
This now leads into another room on the Cyclones that was dealt a bad hand when it came to injuries: the tight end room.
Just like the linebacker room, the tight end room suffered injuries to the starting level players in sophomore Benjamin Brahmer and junior Tyler Moore.
While both Brahmer and Moore were able to get through the first half of the season, they ended up not being able to outrun the injury bug, as they were knocked out for the remainder of the season. Brahmer did, however, play in the Big 12 Championship game against Arizona State but still played injured and proved to be a non-factor in the passing game.
But once again, the players who stepped up for Brahmer and Moore kept the Iowa State offense rolling, with players such as sophomore Gabe Burkle, senior Stevo Klotz and freshman Tripp Walsh all playing a minimum of 13 of the 14 games last season.
Burkle, however, had potentially the biggest impact in the Cyclone offense, as he went on to have 283 of his 296 total yards in the second half of the season after Brahmer and Moore went down with injuries. Along with the yardage, Burkle was able to catch his first collegiate touchdown in the Pop-Tarts Bowl against Miami.
“Once we started getting injured, it affected us at the beginning,” Moore said. “But then guys like [Burkle] really stepped in. He’s always had very big roles since he’s been here, but he took on a bigger role and did great last year.”
Just like the linebackers, the tight end room is getting healthy at the right time, just ahead of the spring football season, as they look forward to staying healthy heading into the fall season in August.
“Right now, currently, everybody’s healthy, going through spring ball, which is certainly a relief for me,” offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser said. “[Last season] was probably as bad, from a health standpoint, as it’s been since I’ve been here coaching the tight ends.”
While Klotz has moved on since graduating from Iowa State, the tight end room still holds a lot of promise and potential as they’ll look to hit the ground running amidst a retooled offense.
“We’re super strong,” Moore said. “Our room could be one of the best in the conference and in the nation. I think we got a lot of guys with a lot of different skill sets that go really well together and I think we could all play on the field at once and separately. We just mesh really well together on the field and off the field.”
“That room has the chance to be really, really special,” Mouser said. “With the depth that we have and you get guys like Cooper Alexander that are coming back who would’ve played for us as a freshman if he didn’t get hurt. Then you got walk-ons like [Walsh] that are going to come here, and he played meaningful snaps for us last year in critical situations and gets better everyday. I can’t say enough about how much I love those guys.”
