AMES, Iowa — One of the secrets behind Iowa State’s College Football Playoff push begins Monday mornings in a solitary meeting room. There’s usually music in the background, sometimes country, sometimes R&B or old-school Drake.
Then quarterback Rocco Becht turns on the film, opens his notebook and begins a detailed, four-day checklist concocted by one first-round pick of the New York Jets, enhanced by former NFL quarterback Chad Pennington and mastered by one of the key figures in the Big 12 championship race.
“Kind of like a 26-point inspection when you go to a car service,” said Rocco’s dad, former NFL tight end Anthony Becht.
Except instead of checking tire pressure and fluid levels, it’s a step-by-step guide to game preparation. Base defenses and blitzes. Defensive changeups and offensive checkdowns. Red zone tendencies and two-minute trends. Everything a quarterback needs to know and do, boiled down to 25 or so boxes.
“If you don’t have all those boxes checked,” Anthony said, “you’re not ready to play on Saturday.”
Rocco always does. So he always is.
That methodical process — “elite,” Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell calls it — doesn’t merely show Becht what to expect from Baylor’s front or Iowa’s secondary. It fortifies a rare trait that will be critical this week against Kansas.
It’s a trait that will determine whether the No. 17 Cyclones have a shot at their first conference championship in more than a century and a spot in the expanded 12-team Playoff.
Becht’s physical growth came first. It had to.
Big-time recruiters weren’t overly interested in a rail-thin sophomore at Wiregrass Ranch High School in the Tampa suburb of Wesley Chapel.
Becht wanted to change that. He asked his dad — a former West Virginia star who had an 11-year NFL career — to help him bulk up. With gyms closed because of the pandemic, Anthony (now the head coach of the UFL’s St. Louis Battlehawks) came up with a training regimen of weighted vests and medicine balls they could do together in their garage.
“We went to work,” Rocco said.
Twenty pounds later, he was 190 pounds and ready for the necessary mental growth. His dad could help with that, too.
Anthony called in help from one of his former NFL quarterbacks, Pennington, a Heisman Trophy finalist at Marshall who was also a first-round pick of the Jets in 2000. Together, they came up with two dozen bullet points before Becht’s senior year of high school. His touchdowns rose (from 21 as a sophomore to 25 as a senior) while his interceptions fell (from eight to six).
“It’s a higher-level thing,” said Becht’s longtime private quarterbacks coach Chip Bennett, who has also worked with Heisman runner-up Michael Penix Jr. and Virginia starter Anthony Colandrea. “Not every kid’s doing that.”
But Becht did. Even if he didn’t understand all the intricacies yet, he knew enough.
Despite his physical and mental progress, Becht remained an unsung, three-star recruit ranked No. 572 nationally in the 247Sports Composite. He drew offers from the likes of Southern Miss and Toledo, but few premier programs.
“Nothing from Florida, which kind of blew my mind a little bit,” his dad said. “But we knew what we had.”
What they had was a tough, athletic passer who could make every throw. Iowa State saw that, too. The Cyclones offered him early, and Becht committed in the spring before his senior season. When he arrived at Iowa State in January 2022, the checklist came with him.
He worked through every box every game as a freshman, even though he was a backup who attempted just 15 passes in three games. When Becht came off the bench in that year’s finale against TCU, Campbell said he felt the team’s energy lift.
“You felt like, ‘Man, there’s a young guy here who’s got a chance to be really special someday,’” Campbell said.
That day arrived in 2023 when incumbent Hunter Dekkers was embroiled in a preseason gambling investigation. Instead of blue-chip freshman JJ Kohl, the Cyclones turned to Becht.
And his blueprint.
Iowa State coaches know the checklist exists. They trust Becht’s process enough to let him rank his favorite calls in every situation and put them on the playsheet in that order.
But they don’t know every box on his list because he checks them all off on his own.
“I couldn’t even tell you what all goes into that thing,” offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser said.
That thing isn’t a physical template anymore; Becht has the boxes memorized.
Though Becht’s preparation begins with overviews Sunday night, the real breakdown starts Monday in the quarterback room with the basics. What are the opponent’s base fronts? What coverages are used on first and second down? What changes on second-and-long?
Becht jots the answers in a notebook, with headings and subheadings as needed. When Tuesday’s practice (focusing on first and second down) starts, he’s ready to apply those notes to the field.
Tuesday night’s work centers on third down, broken into short, medium and long. What coverages does the defense like? What does the secondary do behind a blitz? What are the opponent’s most frequent formations, and what are the tells off them?
Wednesday’s boxes are the red zone — the fringe (from the 40 to the 25), high (the 25 to the 12) and low (inside the 12). Thursday is for two-minute situations, audibles and reviewing to make sure every box is checked and memorized.
Saturdays are the payoff. Becht topped 5,000 career passing yards last week and tied Brock Purdy’s school record of 12 consecutive games with a touchdown pass.
“Ultimately just finding out ways to help myself execute and see things faster in the moment,” Becht said.
Like at the end of a Sept. 7 matchup at Iowa, with the Cyclones trailing 19-17 with 33 seconds left.
His Tuesday boxes (third downs) and Thursday boxes (two-minute drills) told him the Hawkeyes would probably use two safeties with man-to-man coverage beneath them.
“Knowing that and just knowing it quicker, knowing what they’re in based off what I went over during the week is why I feel like we’ve had success,” Becht said.
That success: three consecutive completions to set up a game-winning 54-yard field goal.
While Becht can point to specific throws and plays that came through his checklist, his coaches spotlight a different, intangible edge it has strengthened.
A resiliency that will be put to the test this week.
Becht has always had an innate ability to rebound from inevitable mistakes. In his preseason varsity debut as a high school sophomore on a senior-heavy team, he threw four interceptions. He shrugged it off and won his first five regular-season starts. By Year 2, he was diagnosing and correcting his errors in real-time.
“That’s the maturation process you want to see out of the quarterback position,” Wiregrass Ranch coach Mark Kantor said.
Iowa State is in the Playoff mix in part because Becht’s unflappability has remained, if not progressed:
- Against Iowa, Becht threw an early interception and passed for only 67 first-half yards while leading three three-and-outs. Excluding a spike, he went 13-of-18 in the second half with two touchdowns in leading a comeback from down 13-0.
- After throwing an early pick against Arkansas State, he led the Cyclones on five consecutive scoring drives (including his touchdown rush and two touchdown passes) before being pulled with the game out of reach.
- Baylor intercepted Becht inside the Bears 5 late in the first half. The next four drives: touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, field goal.
- Moments after his second interception led to a UCF touchdown and 8-point Iowa State deficit, Becht threw a 50-yard bomb to set up a field goal. He then ran for the game-winning score with 30 seconds left.
“He can reset himself,” Campbell said. “If you can’t reset yourself, if you can’t find the reset button, then you’re really struggling.”
And if Becht and his teammates can’t find the reset button this week, their hopes of a historic season will suffer a major blow.
Becht threw a 44-yard touchdown pass on third-and-long that gave the Cyclones the lead with two minutes left last week against Texas Tech, but the Red Raiders rallied to pull off a last-second 23-22 victory. The defeat dented but didn’t end the Cyclones’ hopes of claiming their first league title since winning the Missouri Valley Conference in 1912.
At 7-1 overall (4-1 in the Big 12), Iowa State still has a reasonable path to the Big 12 championship and, by extension, the Playoff. The Athletic’s projections model gives the Cyclones a 32 percent chance to make the field, down from 46 percent a week earlier, with a 26 percent chance of winning the Big 12. Losing to Kansas would cause the odds to drop more. Iowa State can’t afford to let one loss turn into two.
| Team | CFP bid | Big 12 title | Record |
|---|---|---|---|
 BYU |
60%
|
39%
|
8-0
|
 Iowa State |
32%
|
26%
|
7-1
|
 Kansas State |
18%
|
16%
|
7-2
|
 Colorado |
9%
|
10%
|
6-2
|
 Texas Tech |
4%
|
5%
|
6-3
|
Odds via Austin Mock’s projections model
The Cyclones need resiliency, and they need Becht’s leadership and confidence to foster it.
Both of those traits come back, in part, to that 25-point inspection. Because Becht and his coaches believe in his meticulous preparation, they can trust his ability to respond to anything. There are no fears about mistakes snowballing or gun-shy throws.
“It’s an earned confidence that he has,” quarterbacks coach Jake Waters said.
One that’s earned, alone, in a meeting room, with an empty notebook and two dozen time-tested mental boxes waiting to be checked off.
(Top photo: David Purdy / Getty Images)
