Hines: What's next for Iowa State football in Year 2 with Rocco Becht at the helm?

AMES – Iowa State has had plenty of quarterbacks to get excited about over the last decade or so. Grant Rohach, Sam Richardson, Joel Lanning, Zeb Noland, Jacob Park, Kyle Kempt and Hunter Dekkers all showed enough flashes to make Cyclone fans optimistic about the future of the position.

For all sorts of reasons – some very universal, some very specific – the only guy it ever really worked out for was Brock Purdy. And while it worked out in a major way for Purdy – both for him and the program – the track record is largely more disappointing than it is encouraging, at least in terms of one player truly taking the reins of the position for the long haul.

Can Rocco Becht buck that trend?

"You want to keep him growing and keep challenging him in every single way possible,” Iowa State quarterbacks coach Jake Waters said Thursday, “because he responds, and he loves it. He wants to be the best so he’s always in here.”

Certainly, the players on that list of former Cyclone signal-callers all wanted to continue on their upward trajectory, so simply having a desire isn’t enough. But that aspiration, by all accounts, is translating to real improvement for Becht, last year’s Big 12 offensive freshman of the year.

“You see certainly a different football player right now, which is hugely positive,” Iowa State coach Matt Campbell said. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to be better or worse. It just means a guy that’s very mature and very confident in understanding the process it takes to be his best on Saturdays.

“Right now, that’s fun to watch.”

Becht passed for 3,210 yards, 23 touchdowns and eight interceptions while completing 63.5 percent of his tosses in 2023. He was instrumental in the Cyclones’ turnaround from 1-2 to the Liberty Bowl. And he did it while being thrust into the position amid a gambling probe that rocked Iowa State football and reverberated nationally.

So it's reasonable to think that after an offseason in which he’s unquestionably The Guy and with a year of experience to build off of, Becht will be even better this season.

Assumptions in football, though, are usually a bad idea. Hard work is a better one, and it sure seems that’s the route Becht has opted to take. From the ground up.

“I think I’ve got a lot better at (footwork),” Becht said. “Just keeping my feet calm in the pocket, just going through my reads.”

Calm is the operative word there. A first-year starter can panic. A first-year starter can go too fast. A first-year starter can bail too early.

A second-year starter shouldn’t.

“It all starts with your feet,” Waters said. “Your feet have to be right with everything we do. With RPOs (run-pass option) or play-action passes or even in the pocket moving – if you're consistent with your feet, you have a chance for your accuracy to go way up. We worked on that a ton.

“He’s worked a ton on it. It’s been awesome so far. He’s been continuing to work on it, too, but it’s been a point of emphasis for him, and he’s done great."

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Becht said he’s seen the difference already.

“My ball placement and accuracy has tremendously gotten better,” he said.

Waters went even further.

“When he gets his feet set and base and he’s calm, I’d put him against anyone in the country throwing the ball,” said Waters, who broke program records for accuracy and efficiency a decade ago as a player at Kansas State.

If that proves to be the case, Becht might end up on the short list for college football’s best quarterbacks.

And the even shorter list of Cyclone quarterbacks who turned one promising season into a career.

Iowa State columnist Travis Hines has covered the Cyclones for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune since 2012. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000 . F ollow him on X at @TravisHines21.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Hines: What's next for Iowa State football in Year 2 with Rocco Becht at the helm?