Keeler: Iowa’s Stanzi brushes off knee injury as ‘nothing’
He hit the tunnel like Usain Bolt on Red Bull, if that helps you sleep at night. An hour after the game, there was no limping, no wincing, no discomfort. Also, no regrets.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Ricky Stanzi assured reporters when asked about his left knee after Iowa’s 37-7 dismantling of Eastern Illinois. “It’s just a part of football — bumps and bruises.”
Yes. And no. Conventional wisdom says that when you go into halftime with a 21-point lead at home over a punching bag, and your starting quarterback just popped his knee out and then back in again, and you’ve got a capable backup, you might want to consider giving that starter the rest of the day off.
Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi limps off the field during the second quarter of the Hawkeyes' 37-7 win against Eastern Illinois at Kinnick Stadium. Stanzi returned one series later after being cleared by team doctors. Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo
It is a marathon, after all, and the hills only get steeper from here.
“If there had been any gray area, we would’ve kept him out,” coach Kirk Ferentz said of Stanzi, who played most of Saturday’s rout despite limping off the field with roughly 12 minutes left to go in the first half. “And he was 100 percent, as was the medical staff. Looked ugly from the sideline, and I’m sure it looked ugly from all angles.”
That it did. On the Hawkeyes’ first offensive play of the second quarter, Stanzi dropped back, rolled right and planted wrong. He basically crumpled to a heap for a 3-yard loss.
“It looked really awkward,” noted Stanzi’s understudy, James Vandenberg, who deftly stepped in and finished off the drive before giving way again.
“I had no idea if it was an ankle, spine, knee — I had no idea what it was. I didn’t know what it was, but I (know) he doesn’t really fake it. So when he comes out, yeah, I’m planning to play the whole game. But one series is fine with me. I mean, it’s his team. He did a great job coming back and led us to a good victory.”
Although when Stanzi was slow to get up and then hobbled gingerly to the sideline, a full house at Kinnick Stadium started having Northwestern flashbacks. So did the kid in pain.
“A little bit, yeah,” admitted Stanzi, who still finished strong — completing 18-of-23 throws for 229 yards, one score and, significantly, no picks. “I was more embarrassed that I tried to make a cut and didn’t even do anything but almost injure myself. It doesn’t get much worse than that. But I’m very fortunate that it was nothing.”
Technically, Ferentz explained, it was a “muscle or soft tissue thing,” but you get the point. It wasn’t serious. Once the medical staff gave the all-clear and Stanzi tested himself with a few practice tosses, he lobbied to jump back into the fray. This one didn’t feel like last November’s ankle injury against the Wildcats; that was the first good sign.
“So that’s what I was thinking: ‘Well, at least I was able to walk off,’” Stanzi recalled. “I remember with Northwestern, it was a lot tougher to walk off. You kind of had to grit your teeth a little bit, so this was much easier.”
When it comes to pain tolerance, you won’t find a tougher son of a biscuit on Melrose Avenue than Stanzi. Well, except for maybe one guy.
“Josh Koeppel,” wideout Colin Sandeman chuckled, referring to the Hawkeye center who was hit by a truck last Monday and walked away, becoming a YouTube sensation in the process. “The kid’s a machine, yeah. But I would say Josh is a little bit higher. And if you ask Rick, he’ll tell you the same.”
Stanzi: “I’ll take (No.) 2 behind Koeppel. And anybody else that’s seen (the video of his accident), obviously, it’s the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen. He’s in his pads today. That just showed how tough that guy is.” On this roster, that seems to be going around.
Category: Iowa Hawkeyes Football
I don’t get the Big Ten channel where I live in florida. So when I saw the clip of Ricky hobbling off the field, my heart sunk. And I worried the rest of the day, that we lost him again. I’m happy to see that he went back in and finished the game. However, the trainers and coaches better check him out good before the next game. Hopefully our offensive line will be able to protect him this year. Not to take anything away from the other QB’s,but if were going to win the big ten title, we need him intact the whole year. As well as all the other starters.
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