Iowa State football notebook: Welcome to Brocktober

AMES — October is here and Brock Purdy still is the quarterback at Iowa State. It’s Brocktober.

The Cyclones are now 10-2 in the month of October with Purdy at the helm after Iowa State demolished Kansas on Saturday night, 59-7.

Remember when Randy Moss had three catches for three touchdowns and 163 yards on Thanksgiving Day against the Cowboys in 1998? Purdy did the quarterback version of that to Kansas in the first quarter on Saturday.

Purdy completed all five of his passes for 96 yards. Four of his five completions were touchdowns.

“I have seen that before, but only from Brock Purdy,” safety Greg Eisworth said. “I remember thinking in the first quarter, ‘Has he thrown an incompletion?’”

The answer was no.

“I really felt like Brock has started to play Brock Purdy style of football,” ISU Coach Matt Campbell said.

“I’m really proud of him. It was a great night by him and I really thought he was outstanding the whole game.”

Purdy finished the night by completing 17 of his 22 passes for 245 yards and four touchdowns.

Young guys and unheralded guys

Backup running back Jirehl Brock was in the same recruiting class as Breece Hall. Because of that, Brock has had to bide his time and make his moments count.

Brock started seeing his playing time increase last season even with Hall and Kene Nwangwu both in front of him. Brock became the de facto third-down running back thanks to his blocking and pass-catching abilities.

His role has marginally increased this season. But Saturday, he was rewarded with his first touchdown as a Cyclone.

“Jirehl is one of those guys that does the dirty work for our team,” Campbell said. “Sometimes he’s the lead blocker, sometimes he’s in on short yardage and to see that guy get rewarded was great. He was probably the fifth read on that play and credit to Brock Purdy for getting him that ball, but man, it’s awesome to see a guy like that get rewarded.

“Sometimes it’s frustrating because you want to be the guy. You want to be the guy who’s getting the ball and all the carries. You have to be mentally tough to keep grinding away at it. For him it’s awesome and what a great reward to find the end zone.”

Speaking of running backs, true freshman running back Deon Silas also found the end zone on a 16-yard rush in the fourth quarter. The 5-foot-9 Silas has shown a lot of burst and elusiveness in the limited time he’s gotten.

“Deon scored and that was great,” Campbell said. “Some of those guys are pressing us and they’re saying through their play, ‘You have to play me more.’ That’s fun.”

Another one of the guys pressing the coaches to play him more is true freshman safety Beau Freyler, who ended the game with a team-high eight tackles.

But all of them have gotten opportunities.

Guys like Kyle Krezek, a sophomore walk-on from Cedar Rapids Xavier, haven’t.

“It’s more rewarding to watch the guys that do sacrifice a great deal,” Campbell said. “To me the greatest reward tonight was watching Kyle Krezek, who is one of our walk-on defensive linemen. He’s probably the greatest effort-giver on our team. He comes to work every day. How many games will he ever get a chance to play in? I don’t know. But he had two big tackles on Kansas’ last drive. That’s what I love to watch.”

New punter for Iowa State

Iowa State’s special teams against Baylor left a lot to be desired. The biggest change from Baylor to Kansas was Iowa State switching punters from Corey Dunn to Cameron Shook.

Shook punted three times and averaged 40 yards per punt.

“The great thing that Cam has is he has great height on his punts,” Campbell said. “Yes distance is important but the hang time allows the coverage team to get down there and that’s really important, too. We’ll evaluate and see where it is. It’s still a competition and we feel fortunate and have faith that both guys will only continue to push each other, grow and continue to get better.”

Dunn averaged 41.5 yards per punt.