Iowa State football becoming more ‘curious’ as it prepares for Arizona State

AMES — When times are tough, changes are often warranted.

Not massive ones. Not full-scale overhauls. Just a handful of well-crafted tweaks designed to help cure what ails Iowa State’s now-struggling football team.

“I think I’ve used this word a lot in here, (and it’s) ‘curious,’” said Cyclone head coach Matt Campbell, who hopes to see that sense of curiosity overcome consternation to end a three-game skid in Saturday’s noon (TNT) Big 12 game against Arizona State. “I think you’re always looking for ways to help your team be the best — and every season, every week, is different.”

Confounding at times, too. Just a few weeks ago, ISU (5-3, 2-3) and the reigning conference champion Sun Devils (5-3, 3-2) remained among the favorites to return to the league title game. But injuries have hit both teams hard, as the Cyclones’ lost All-Big 12 caliber cornerbacks Jeremiah Cooper and Jontez Williams, and Arizona State now is without star quarterback Sam Leavitt and possibly its leading receiver, Jordyn Tyson.

The list of maladies for both participants in last season’s Big 12 championship game extends far beyond those elite players, too, which is one reason they’ve struggled to execute in critical moments recently.

So how to fix those issues from the Cyclones’ perspective?

Make a few well-tailored adjustments to practice — anything to shake-up routines when the trends in terms of wins and losses spiral downward.

“We’ve worked all year for this,” said sophomore wide receiver Brett Eskildsen, who caught a 75-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Rocco Becht on the first play in last week’s 41-27 home loss to 10th-ranked and unbeaten BYU. “We’re not gonna give up after three (losses). (We’re) playing for our seniors and each other. We’ve put in work from January all the way to this point, so we’re not gonna give up now in November.”

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The Cyclones still have a chance to notch nine wins in the regular season after reeling off a program-record-shattering 11 victories last season. Of course, they’d have to win out in order the achieve that rare feat, and that’s one of the reasons why ISU’s coaches have made a handful of changes to practice.

“We added another walk-through period at the end of practice (on Tuesday),” ISU offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser said. “Coach Campbell had a really good idea to be able to do some half-line stuff where we as coaches can go through and just give different looks, and just play half-field concepts into the boundary, and just work on some timing, and some different looks on certain things. So it’s not huge, monumental changes. (It’s) just a couple little things in practice, and then how can we keep football fresh for our guys?

“Because at the end of the season, it doesn’t matter if you’re 7-0 like we were last year, or you’re 5-3 and you’ve lost three games in a row, you have to find ways to get your guys excited to come to the facility every day.”

That excitement, combined with Campbell’s curiosity, should lead to better execution, which has become a problem in each of the Cyclones’ three consecutive losses. Dropped passes and missed tackles. Bad throws and drive-killing penalties. All of these things have led to ISU’s longest skid since the 2022 season — and all are fixable when the proper mindset prevails.

“We’re trying to focus on ourselves,” said Cyclone tight end Gabe Burkle, who’s caught multiple passes in each game he’s played this season. “What we can get better at? How we can kind of control the controllables and going out there and executing?”

Burkle said he and his teammates are working on being extra “intentful” in all that they do. That’s always desirable, of course, but there’s an added emphasis on it now. Just as cultivating curiosity has become an important element of Campbell’s teaching process — and it’s heightened as the calendar turns to the most meaningful month of the regular season.

“How do we become the best team in the month of November?” Campbell said. “We’ll define our football team, positive, minuses, at the end of the season when you can sit back and reflect on all those things, but I think you put your head down, you go to work, and the results will come as long as we continue to improve and get ourselves better.”

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