Kick Coverage and Tyler Replogle

I've been really, really impressed the past few weeks with IU's kick coverage units, especially kick off coverage. Several kids really been speed and hustle and also lay the wood to guys when making the tackle.

The unit is led by Justin Carrington and up until this week, Tyler Replogle (more on this in a bit). Others that contribute on a regular basis include Adrian Burks, Matt Mayberry, Mitch Evans, Jerry Williams, James Bailey, and Joe Kleinsmith. Of course it helps that Austin Starr has been really consistant in getting ball inside the 10 just about every single time.

I hated to hear that Tyler Replogle was lost for the season with an ACL tear. He was really having a great season, and though these things are fairly routine anymore, he's still gonna be a year or so coming back, which will cut into next year a little. The good news is that he just tore the ACL and it's early October. He'll probably have to sit the spring, but he should be about 85 to 90 percent by the beginning of fall practice and near 100 percent by Game 1 next season. He'll be counted on heavily next season, but missing spring practice will open the door for another of the RS freshman.

A couple people have asked about Nick Broome of Columbus, IN and where IN is at with him. Rivals lists him as having 4.5 speed and at 6'4 250 that's pretty darn impressive really. He's been to IU at least 3 times over the past few months, but we haven't offered and only low end MAC and D 1 AA Illinois State and Indiana State have, so something doesn't add up here. He certainly put up good numbers last year with 65 tackles, 6 sacks, and 9 batted balls. He's also blocked 5 kicks in his career and he has a pretty impressive vertical of over 30". So far this season, Nick's team is 7 and 1 and he's got a total of 50 tackles (only stats I could find). According to one of my friends at Columbus FD, in his opinion, he's not good enough to play Big Ten Football. He's pretty athletic, but not very mobile and he really questions the 4.5 speed. Says he's probably low end MAC to D 1AA material. Doubt we'll see IU offer here, unless he's an invited walk on and we won't know about that for awhile yet.