FRISCO, Texas - Jimmy Rogers isn’t interested in letting Iowa State’s massive roster turnover become the headline.
At Big 12 Media Days, the Cyclones’ head coach acknowledged the “general curiosity” around a team with 84 new players, but he pushed back hard on any suggestion that this is a reset year. For Rogers, the standard stays the same.
“The mission is winning,” Rogers said. “To expect anything less or to take a year off or, you know, say that this is a rebuilding year-I don’t think anybody in the NFL says that, and their rosters look different every single year. So I’m not going to buy into that.”
That mindset starts with the culture Rogers wants to build. He boiled the program’s identity down to one word: “Toughness.”
From there, he expanded on what that has to look like in a locker room full of new faces. In his view, the group has to be “egoless” and “bound by trust, purpose and accountability.”
One of the clearest signs of that culture, Rogers said, is quarterback Jaylen Raynor. He called Raynor an “unbelievable leader,” and said the impact showed up almost immediately.
“The ability to be one week into a program and learn every player’s name and create a nickname for them... people want to be around [him], people want to listen to and they’re inspired by how he works,” Rogers said.
Rogers also spotlighted Dubuque native Kyle Konrardy, bringing him to the event and calling him “arguably the most talented player on our team.”
Konrardy’s range, Rogers said, changes how a game gets managed. Being able to hit “60-plus yarders” affects decision-making in real time, because “it changes the course of how you call a game when you go for it on fourth down.”
On the defensive side, Rogers is making a schematic shift to a 4-2-5 look. The goal, he said, is to “keep the line of scrimmage as flat as possible” and make stopping the run the priority.
He pointed to defensive lineman Isaac Terrell as a key piece in that front, describing his play style as “relentless” with an “unbelievable motor.”
Rogers also made clear he wants Iowa State’s annual rivalry game with Iowa to remain on the schedule. He called those matchups the “pageantry of college football.”
“To take a rivalry away from the state-I would hate to see it,” Rogers said. “I think all rivalries across the country should be played.”
For all the talk about new faces, new systems and new expectations, Rogers ended on the same note he started with: talk only goes so far.
“We have the right people in the building,” Rogers said. “But we got to do something about it. It can’t be all talk.”
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