The big news of today is the official announcement that Jewel Hampton's right knee injury requires surgery and will force him to miss the entire 2009 season. Hampton will redshirt this year and come back as a sophomore in 2010. Ferentz didn't go into specifics about the injury but called it "repairable" and said that Jewel should be fully recovered by next summer.
The running back position will be handled by committee with Paki O'Meara, Adam Robinson, Jeff Brinson, and Brandon Wegher. On Saturday expect a lot of Paki and a lot of Robinson. Brinson has missed a substantial amount of practice with an ankle injury, so may not see a ton of action until later in the season. I think Wegher will also definitely get his share of reps. He'll probably come in during mop-up time against a beat-up and tired UNI defense, break a couple of long runs, and then will be anointed as the greatest running back ever. Only time will tell who will ultimately emerge from this group as a legitimate number 1.
Other not as big news:
- Julian Vandervelde is on his way back. He'll be practicing again, but will probably be out until the Penn State game on September 26th.
- Kyle Calloway has been practicing and it sounds like he'll be ready next week against ISU. Ferentz didn't speculate whether or not Dace Richardson will move back to guard once Calloway is back, but I think that's what we're all expecting. Adam Gettis will probably be the odd man out. Things will get really interesting with Vandervelde is back...will he start over Richardson or Doering?
- The other corner still has not been settled. Ferentz will be watching Lowe, Castillo, and even Hyde this week to decide who will start.
- I was right about Ferentz purposely leaving off the true freshman from the depth chart. He said that he was "trying to keep a lid on that" but that the BTN preview show last week exposed the freshmen.
- The Murray and Mossbrucker competition still goes on, but he did mention Mossbrucker redshirting again.
- Ferentz reiterated that Ballard has been very strong at defensive tackle and Binns an excellent defensive end.