Video Sessions -- Inside drills with the No. 2s

Here is some of the same action with linemen a little farther down the depth chart.

Outside of number and a little bit of a beard, I have a hard time telling redshirt frosh DTs Nathan Bazata and Brant Gressel apart. They are starting to look the part. They're more cut out of the old school of Iowa DT, shorter (6-foot-ish) but solid and high awareness of leverage.

Critical question No. 3

-- Punter, yeah, what about punter?

From what I saw yesterday, I still don't know. I imagine junior Connor Kornbrath's two years as Iowa's punter gives him the incumbent's edge over junior Dillon Kidd.

Here's Iowa's special teams coordinator/running backs coach Chris White on the topic last week:

'We're trying to be fair to both of them. They're competing every day, whether it's in practice or specifically after practice. We're charting every punt, and any time we're outdoors we have to chart their hang times and their distances. We've got it all tabulated. Each day we'll give them their averages and hang times and distances and really where we feel those guys are. At the end of spring we'll let them know where we feel they are. It's not going to be a done deal until training camp. I know that for sure.

'Connor would be the first one to admit it, he was inconsistent last year. He had some really fine moments where he punted the ball extremely well, but then there was times where his hang time hurt us. We've got to get more consistency out of the punter, and it's hard. There's a lot of windy games in the Big Ten, and we just felt that it was important for our football team, specifically our defense, where we've got to change the field with field position, and we felt we needed to have him compete against someone.”

White was frank with his answers last week in regard to punter and running back. He mentioned fullback with Mark Weisman (in the future, as in the NFL) and said Jordan Canzeri is Iowa's best instinctive running back.

Kidd is a scholarship luxury. Not a lot of teams have two scholarship punters.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@sourcemedia.net