The senior years of O-linemen Ike Boettger and Boone Myers took some unforeseen curves.
By Courtney Baumann
This season didn’t go quite how Boone Myers and Ike Boettger expected it to.
Both are senior offensive linemen, and both had season-ending injuries that kept them out of the lineup pretty early.
For Myers, it was a nagging ankle injury that did him in. He tried to push it as far as it would go, but made a tough decision about halfway through the season to have surgery and put the damage behind him.
It came down to Myers looking pretty far into the future — years down the road — to realize that he needed to get it taken care of.
“Looking big picture, the future down the road, do I want to really mess myself up? When I’m 30, when football is said and done, and I’m working a job, I don’t want to have this ankle keep coming up and bothering me,” Myers said. “There are a lot of things, it was a really hard decision. It took me a really long time to make it.”
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Now that he has had the surgery, Myers is taking it one day at a time for recovery. There isn’t necessarily a set timetable for when he will be ready to go again, but it will not before Iowa plays its bowl game in December.
Boettger, on the other hand, got to play little more than six quarters in the 2017 season before his injury forced him off the field.
During the third quarter of the overtime win over Iowa State, Boettger left the game with a lower leg injury. After the game, Ferentz said it could be his Achilles, but he left open a small window of hope that it could be something less serious.
Boettger knew better, though.
“I honestly knew right away that it was probably that. I’ve heard of Achilles injuries,” he said. “You can feel pretty evidently that it’s not there. I knew probably 10 minutes after it happened that I was probably done.”
Like Myers, the native of Cedar Falls still has some time before he will be back to 100 percent. A typical Achilles injury takes four to six months to heal, and Boettger still has a couple more months to go. However, he has been working out of his boot recently and seems to be ahead of schedule in his recovery.
While they are understandably frustrated by not being on the field, the two fifth-year seniors have taken it upon themselves to be an extension of the coaching staff while they are still a part of the team and in recovery.
For Myers, that’s the only option. Helping out the younger guys is the only thing he can focus on, other than getting himself better.
“Ike and I are pretty much coaches,” Myers said. “I think they learn a lot from us because we’ve been out of the field. We know what they’re seeing, and our main job is to just help those guys.”
Boettger more or less sees it the same way, and both have been impressed with the way other players have stepped in to replace them.
RELATED: Without Boettger, Myers, Iowa’s O-line is lacking experienced depth
Both he and Myers pointed to Tristan Wirfs and Alaric Jackson in particular — Wirfs a true freshman and Jackson a redshirt freshman — as really taking responsibility for their positions.
“It’s unique. The two guys that have stepped in have done really nice jobs and have really stepped in there and performed better than what you’d expect,” Boettger said. “I fully expect that to continue, every game has gotten better, and they’re going to be outstanding players. It’s a lot for them, though, too.”
Both jokingly noted that they would have had no place out on the field when they were so new to the program — when they joined the team in 2013, Boettger weighed 40 pounds less than he does now, and though Myers was listed at 285, that was probably being a little generous.
Unlike their predecessors, Jackson and Wirfs came in as big guys. Jackson sits at 320, Wirfs is 315. Their capabilities aren’t just because of their size, though; they have the football knowledge to be out on the field as young as they are.
“Thinking back to my true freshman and redshirt freshman years, I was in no place to be on the field. I was no place to be anywhere near the field then,” Myers said. “It’s a learning curve for them. They’ve had to learn a lot quickly, and I’m proud of them for how fast they’ve caught on and how well they’re doing.”
Although Myers and Boettger will not see the field again as Hawkeyes, both do have hopes of playing again. If the two work as hard as they worked to make the Hawkeye team and improve over their time in Iowa City, that goal is not out of reach.
Both were walk-ons for the Hawkeyes, having turned down scholarships at other schools to try out for Iowa.
Luckily for them, the decision worked out to their advantage.
“[Ike} and Boone are the same way. It was a leap of faith for them. We tried to let them know that we were really sincere, we really sincerely thought they had opportunity here,” Ferentz said. “But credit is on their end because they believed in it, and they believed in themselves more importantly, and then came here and took advantage of the opportunity.”
With the NFL Combine occuring in late February, Myers and Boettger still have some time to work on their recoveries before thinking about what the next step will entail.
They still feel like they owe it to themselves to give it a shot, though.
Until then, they will continue to work side-by-side with trainers on their recoveries as they have all season. As unfortunate as both injuries were, the every day company makes the process seem a little less difficult.
“I don’t think it makes it easier overall, but day to day, absolutely,” Boettger said. “Just having somebody there — we’re in the pool together, we’re in treatment together.”
And though their careers at Iowa did not end exactly as anyone would have liked, Ferentz said both Myers and Boettger have brought a lot to the program in their five years as Hawkeyes.
“It’s tough that those guys aren’t able to play right now and contribute, but the development and growth that they went through and the success and the things — all the good times they’ve had during their years,” Ferentz said. “If there’s a happy ending to this, at least both those guys have been parts of a lot of good moments during their careers, and they were right there with the guys during the good, highs and lows, this year, as well.”