There will be no change at quarterback on Saturday when Iowa State hosts Oklahoma State. Sam Richardson started Saturday’s loss to Baylor but freshman Grant Rohach came off the bench to get his first action.
Iowa State coach Paul Rhoads says Sam Richardson will start and they expect him to play at a high level with better health. He says Rohach was put into the Baylor game in the hopes of jump starting the offense into moving down the field. Rhoads says it didn’t happen and Richardson’s knowledge of the offense if far ahead of Rohach’s.
While much of the focus has been on Baylor scoring 71 points Rhoads says he is more concerned the Cyclone offense only generated one touchdown. “It’s not just the Baylor week, it’s been the two back-to-back weeks, we’ve been overall unproductive,” Rhoads says. He says they’ve gone 19 series without a first down in the last two weeks and he calls it “awful offensive football.”
Rhoads says he knew winning at Baylor would be difficult but he was shocked at the margin, as he didn’t see the lopsided victory coming. Rhoads is confident the game was just an aberration and not a sign of things to come. “Up until the Baylor fiasco, our biggest loss was 8 points and we’d been in every single football game,” according to Rhoads. He says the big loss has not dampened the attitude of the team.