Iowa Football: Hawkeyes Release Depth Chart Ahead of Showdown with Wisconsin

The Iowa Hawkeyes have had an extra week to brush off a disappointing home loss to Purdue and turn their attention toward Big Ten West rival Wisconsin. The Badgers and Hawkeyes will battle it out for the Heartland Trophy on Saturday and a key question for Iowa fans is who will be available for the Hawkeyes.

Iowa lost star defensive back Riley Moss to injury in the historic win over Penn State and certainly looked like they could use him as they were torched by David Bell and the Purdue Boilermakers a week ago. Wisconsin and Purdue could not be more different stylistically as the Badgers opted to throw only 8 total passes in their win over the Boilermakers this past weekend, but Iowa would still like to face their rival at full strength.

Unfortunately for the Hawkeyes, that doesn’t appear to be the case. At least according to the depth chart released by the University of Iowa on Monday.

Here’s a look at the full depth chart:

Image via HawkeyeSports.com

Noted Notables

• First and foremost, Riley Moss is nowhere to be found. He remains replaced by Terry Roberts with Jermari Harris his primary backup while UNI transfer Xavior Williams backs up Matt Hankins.
• It’s also notable that offensive lineman Cody Ince and defensive lineman Deontae Craig are listed on the depth chart after missing the Purdue game.
• Or is it. Perhaps the most notable thing about this week’s depth chart is that there is actually nothing notable compared to a week ago. That is, the depth chart posted for the Wisconsin matchup is identical to the one the University released for the Purdue game. In fact, one of the links to this week’s game notes (the one at the bottom of the “1st and 10” section) is in fact a link to last week’s.

So what does this all mean? Likely that Ferentz and company have opted to just leave nothing changed so as to not provide any insight to our foes from the north(east). We don’t know if Riley Moss will be available and we likely won’t get much more detail on that even in the press availability on Tuesday. We also don’t know if Cody Ince or Deontae Craig are actually healthy again or if we just didn’t see an update to the depth chart. We might get an update on those guys this week.

Beyond those major questions, the health of Matt Hankins is still a concern to be addressed during media availability. Hankins was injured against Purdue, though there is no indication he will miss any time.

But perhaps bigger than any injury question is the overhanging question of what Iowa will do with its offensive line. The OL has been downright bad this year despite having one of the very best players in the country in the middle with Tyler Linderbaum. If Iowa can’t get a solid push in the run game and keep a clean pocket for Spencer Petras, this week will turn ugly in a hurry.

On the other sideline, the Badgers are dealing with some injuries of their own.

Those are largely to players not expected to contribute much in this contest. However, it does leave the depth at tight end pretty thin given three players listed as out at the position this week and two more questionable.

Here’s a look at Wisconsin’s full depth chart ahead of this week’s matchup:

Image via UWBadgers.com

Iowa and Wisconsin are set to kick off at 11am CT from Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.