Kirk Ferentz announces Iowa TE Luke Lachey is 'out for quite awhile' with 'significant' leg injury
Kirk Ferentz confirmed a report on Tuesday that Iowa tight end Luke Lachey will be out for the foreseeable future after suffering a leg injury.
The Hawkeyes leader took the podium to provide the media with some injury updates ahead of Iowa’s showdown with Penn State, where he touched on Lachey’s injury.
“I feel most badly for him obviously. He’s the person most affected. Just an unfortunate development, but he’ll be fine here in time. It’s a significant injury, so he’s going to be out for quite awhile here,” Ferentz said, via Tom Kakert of Hawkeye Report.
Like Lachey has caught ten passes for 131 yards on the season thus far. While he wasn’t lighting up the score-sheet, his absence will be felt on offense for the Hawkeyes.
Iowa is currently undefeated on the season, and looking to remain so. They’ll have a tough matchup with Penn State this weekend in Happy Valley, and look to pull the upset against the Nittany Lions.
Anthony Herron believes Iowa’s offense can break out
The Iowa offense remains one of the biggest stories in college football as the “Drive to 325” enters its third week. That’s the magic number for Brian Ferentz to reach 25 points per game and hit an incentive in his contract.
Through two games, the Hawkeyes averaged 22 points per game. However, Big Ten Network analyst and former Iowa defensive end Anthony Herron thinks that unit could be preparing for a breakout.
With Cade McNamara at quarterback — even if he’s working back from an injury — Herron said there could be room for the offense to get better. Coming off last week’s 20-13 victory over Iowa State, Week 3’s game against Western Michigan will be a good litmus test to see how aggressive Iowa will be the rest of the way.
“I do believe there is great potential for the offense to expand here,” Herron told On3’s Andy Staples on Andy Staples On3. “We’ve seen a couple of really cool moments from Seth Anderson early in the season. Kaleb Johnson, a record setting freshman running back last year, hasn’t completely got on track yet. But then Jaziun Patterson was able to have some big moments against Iowa State in their in-state rivalry game last weekend. The offensive line’s showing some really strong signs of improvement early in the season vs. where they’ve been the last couple of years as young and banged up.
“So the game I’m going to call — I’m actually going to be on the broadcast this weekend for the Big Ten Network — I’m looking forward to seeing how aggressive, how much attack there’s going to be from the Hawkeyes here. Not only airing it out, but then how much can they expand that the rushing attack and try to dominate the line of scrimmage?”
On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this article.