Back away from the edge Hawk fans!

B

BirdsOfPrey

Well-Known Member
I've watched every game Kirk Ferentz has coached at Iowa. It should be really obvious to Hawk fans by now that the football
program under Kirk relies on developing talent and remaining relatively injury free to achieve success. The Hawks don't simply reload the program with five star players and four star backups at every position. Every year, the Hawks have a few holes that need plugged. The Hawks have always started slowly in their opening few games. Pre-Big Ten play is conservative and inconsistent at best. Every year we seem to drop an early season game to ISU or some MAC team and barely survive a few others. It seems the goal is to develop talent, work on fundamentals, prevent injuries & not provide much worthwhile tape for Big Ten opponents to scout. What I'm saying is the Pre-Big Ten games under Kirk have never accurately predicted whether or not the Hawkeye go on to have a successful season. I know, dreams of a national championship killed already, but how realistic are those dreams. Given the Hawkeyes youth, saving those dreams for next year would seem more realistic.
We have talent, speed & depth at the receiver and tight end positions. The Hawks have multiple running back weapons. We have the playmakers on offense if they can get focused & figure out how to blend those skills into a working cohesive unit. The linebackers are improving. The D-line is solid & deep. We have two young talented cornerbacks and a hitman at safety. Punt coverage has been good. Kidd's punting improved dramatically in the Iowa State game. Koehn has a powerful turbo leg. He's drilling kickoffs into the endzone consistently. As he gains confidence, he could possibly become a field goal weapon as distance should not be a problem. Vandeberg looks like a potential star at punt returner. Canzeri is solid as a kick returner & J. Parker is fast if he can learn to hold onto the ball. The coaches will have their annual Pre-Big Ten meeting and make some decisions about personnel & Kirk will re-focus Davis on successful play calIing & Parker will start working the raider package. I think starting next week against Pitt, the Hawks all start showing up and playing a complete game. Sometimes young teams need a loss to gel as a team and buy in. I like Iowa's chances vs. Pitt. Pitt is almost one dimensionally a running team. Pitt has zero passing attack. Nobody is going to rush for 300-400 yards on the Hawks...bring it Pitt. Too many good solid parts
on this football team for them not to be successful.
 
BirdsOfPrey said:
I've watched every game Kirk Ferentz has coached at Iowa. It should be really obvious to Hawk fans by now that the football
program under Kirk relies on developing talent and remaining relatively injury free to achieve success. The Hawks don't simply reload the program with five star players and four star backups at every position. Every year, the Hawks have a few holes that need plugged. The Hawks have always started slowly in their opening few games. Pre-Big Ten play is conservative and inconsistent at best. Every year we seem to drop an early season game to ISU or some MAC team and barely survive a few others. It seems the goal is to develop talent, work on fundamentals, prevent injuries & not provide much worthwhile tape for Big Ten opponents to scout. What I'm saying is the Pre-Big Ten games under Kirk have never accurately predicted whether or not the Hawkeye go on to have a successful season. I know, dreams of a national championship killed already, but how realistic are those dreams. Given the Hawkeyes youth, saving those dreams for next year would seem more realistic.
We have talent, speed & depth at the receiver and tight end positions. The Hawks have multiple running back weapons. We have the playmakers on offense if they can get focused & figure out how to blend those skills into a working cohesive unit. The linebackers are improving. The D-line is solid & deep. We have two young talented cornerbacks and a hitman at safety. Punt coverage has been good. Kidd's punting improved dramatically in the Iowa State game. Koehn has a powerful turbo leg. He's drilling kickoffs into the endzone consistently. As he gains confidence, he could possibly become a field goal weapon as distance should not be a problem. Vandeberg looks like a potential star at punt returner. Canzeri is solid as a kick returner & J. Parker is fast if he can learn to hold onto the ball. The coaches will have their annual Pre-Big Ten meeting and make some decisions about personnel & Kirk will re-focus Davis on successful play calIing & Parker will start working the raider package. I think starting next week against Pitt, the Hawks all start showing up and playing a complete game. Sometimes young teams need a loss to gel as a team and buy in. I like Iowa's chances vs. Pitt. Pitt is almost one dimensionally a running team. Pitt has zero passing attack. Nobody is going to rush for 300-400 yards on the Hawks...bring it Pitt. Too many good solid parts
on this football team for them not to be successful.
Click to expand...

I want to watch the team you've been watching and not the team from Saturday.
 
There's really no good reason Iowa lost that game. Ferentz continues to make bad teams look great against the Hawks. I saw a stat yesterday that was very frustrating. It said ISU has held opponents to under 20 in the past 4 years 4 times. It was two MAC teams and Iowa twice. Like you said, they have talent. A lot of the frustration seems to be that even if the Hawks have players the coaches don't know how to use them or don't use them at all.
 
Would agree with the OP. This is nothing new for Iowa we have always played suspect in start of season, dreams of playing in the playoff is not realistic at all, anyone who thought we were going to be 10-0 going into UW game, has not watched much football, we are not even close too competing against Oregon, Alabama, Oklahoma, and other top programs, who will play in the playoff.

With what we have we need to be realistic right now we are a 8-9 win max!! Read in a post on here that we have depth on the DL, but yet we only play 4 for 98% of the snaps. We just don't currently have the players to compete at an elite level, right now the Big Ten only has 2 teams capable of that.

This team will get better, and I am still seeing 5-3 or 6-2 in Big Ten, and another bowl, but dreams of playoff are not realistic right now.
 
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Give Ferentz 10 straight games against the Sisters of the Poor, and he would find a way to lose at least one of those games.
We had an "easy" schedule in 2006 and 2007 and peed on our leg.
Wisconsin has that same similar easy conference schedule, and I'm sure that they will be 9-1 before playing Nebraska and Iowa.
 
Not surprised you are wedded to the status quo, OP. Very Ferentz-like.

At this point I'm ready for a change in coaches. Mediocrity is not good enough. If you're not winning, you're losing.

Yes, the next coach may be a disaster. Or he could put the O back in IWA, restore Hawkeye football to Hayden Fry levels as a power in the B1G and consistently ranked among the Top 25 in the country. In the words of Joel Goodson, sometimes you've just got to say "What the f***?" and take a risk on something new.
 
Hey good post, BirdsofPrey; On Saturday nite, I was so despondent and Mad, I could have SPIT BLOOD.
But now it's 3 days later and I've heard and read all the vitriol and whining. That really gets the Hawkeyes, or
their fans no where.

Just time to Suck it up, Buttercups. GO HAWKEYES! ***** the Clowns. GO HAWKS.
We need to FIX the offense and especially the O-line and we'll be fine.
I attended the Outback Bowl, last January and was so proud to be a Hawkeye.
This team can rise up, MARK MY WORDS. GO HAWKS
 
I won't back away from the edge this time. I gave KF the benefit of the doubt in 2011 to let GD get his offensive system in. Now that it is in, it is a disaster, and is looking to be the biggest problem that this program has right now. I had alway thought that KF strengths far outweighed his weaknesses. Now I think it is 50/50 and I just can't keep overlooking the same freaking weaknesses year in and year out. If the offense can somehow show significant improvement (which I highly doubt) going forward, I will gladly move back from the edge. If they don't and things are crappy again this year (making 3 of the last 4 years crappy) I'm done. No more season tickets, no more supporting KF.
 
BirdsOfPrey said:
I know, dreams of a national championship killed already, but how realistic are those dreams.
Click to expand...

I think most folks on here would settle for a state championship and a game or two north of .500 in Big Ten play. I can understand ISU beating us with some of those McCarney teams that had winning records and put some decent guys into the NFL, but losing to this iteration of the Clowns is downright embarrassing.
 
deanvogs said:
I won't back away from the edge this time. I gave KF the benefit of the doubt in 2011 to let GD get his offensive system in. Now that it is in, it is a disaster, and is looking to be the biggest problem that this program has right now. I had alway thought that KF strengths far outweighed his weaknesses. Now I think it is 50/50 and I just can't keep overlooking the same freaking weaknesses year in and year out. If the offense can somehow show significant improvement (which I highly doubt) going forward, I will gladly move back from the edge. If they don't and things are crappy again this year (making 3 of the last 4 years crappy) I'm done. No more season tickets, no more supporting KF.
Click to expand...

I don't know how anyone can look at the turd of what the offense became the year after O'Keefe left and think Davis is capable of coaching at this level. Vandenberg wasn't a world beater, but he wasn't as bad as Davis made him. He had 25 TDs against 7 picks as a junior under O'Keefe and 7 TDs against 8 picks as a senior.
 
nothing new? this team boasts the worst offensive production under Ferentz. This isn't just "not showing our hand". Iowa's runs a hand full of plays... two variety s to the left, one up the center and two varieties to the right. (stretch and zone). When did Iowa suddenly ever rollout creative plays in Big Ten plays that they have been sitting on? The only new play that I saw them do was 28 thunder - toss sweep to shonn greene against wisconsin. everything else was SSDD.

This however is a new scheme that did not work in 2012. It did not work in 2013 against better competition, and now that they have the players its not working still - in fact it is worse.

Yes this is a bit new. And yet its quite old.
 
NCHawker said:
nothing new? this team boasts the worst offensive production under Ferentz. This isn't just "not showing our hand". Iowa's runs a hand full of plays... two variety s to the left, one up the center and two varieties to the right. (stretch and zone). When did Iowa suddenly ever rollout creative plays in Big Ten plays that they have been sitting on? The only new play that I saw them do was 28 thunder - toss sweep to shonn greene against wisconsin. everything else was SSDD.

This however is a new scheme that did not work in 2012. It did not work in 2013 against better competition, and now that they have the players its not working still - in fact it is worse.

Yes this is a bit new. And yet its quite old.
Click to expand...

"Worst offensive production" than any yearly average.
Even more depressing when you compare full season against the combination of Northern Iowa, Ball State and Iowa State.
 
Not until the offense shows me something different, by different I mean a ton of improvement.

JR may or not be the man, and CJ may or not be the answer. What I know beyond any doubt is that the Greg Davis offense isn't working, and yes, the talent is now here. KF is ultimately responsible, but this crappy hybrid off scheme is the cancer.

I am fine with conservative, even boring, power/play action offense. I am NOT OK with that brand mixed with predictable plays never going down field.

3 days later...still fuming

Enough.
 
BirdsOfPrey said:
I've watched every game Kirk Ferentz has coached at Iowa. It should be really obvious to Hawk fans by now that the football
program under Kirk relies on developing talent and remaining relatively injury free to achieve success. The Hawks don't simply reload the program with five star players and four star backups at every position. Every year, the Hawks have a few holes that need plugged. The Hawks have always started slowly in their opening few games. Pre-Big Ten play is conservative and inconsistent at best. Every year we seem to drop an early season game to ISU or some MAC team and barely survive a few others. It seems the goal is to develop talent, work on fundamentals, prevent injuries & not provide much worthwhile tape for Big Ten opponents to scout. What I'm saying is the Pre-Big Ten games under Kirk have never accurately predicted whether or not the Hawkeye go on to have a successful season. I know, dreams of a national championship killed already, but how realistic are those dreams. Given the Hawkeyes youth, saving those dreams for next year would seem more realistic.
We have talent, speed & depth at the receiver and tight end positions. The Hawks have multiple running back weapons. We have the playmakers on offense if they can get focused & figure out how to blend those skills into a working cohesive unit. The linebackers are improving. The D-line is solid & deep. We have two young talented cornerbacks and a hitman at safety. Punt coverage has been good. Kidd's punting improved dramatically in the Iowa State game. Koehn has a powerful turbo leg. He's drilling kickoffs into the endzone consistently. As he gains confidence, he could possibly become a field goal weapon as distance should not be a problem. Vandeberg looks like a potential star at punt returner. Canzeri is solid as a kick returner & J. Parker is fast if he can learn to hold onto the ball. The coaches will have their annual Pre-Big Ten meeting and make some decisions about personnel & Kirk will re-focus Davis on successful play calIing & Parker will start working the raider package. I think starting next week against Pitt, the Hawks all start showing up and playing a complete game. Sometimes young teams need a loss to gel as a team and buy in. I like Iowa's chances vs. Pitt. Pitt is almost one dimensionally a running team. Pitt has zero passing attack. Nobody is going to rush for 300-400 yards on the Hawks...bring it Pitt. Too many good solid parts
on this football team for them not to be successful.
Click to expand...
This is the PRECISE type of fan that allows Ferentz the arrogance he has. This kind of fan will stay like this until Ferentz turns Iowa into Iowa State.
 
I, for one, will not step away from the ledge....this type of ball is hard to watch at times.....it's the same brand that we've been used to far too long....change should be coming, but it's never getting here....we do recruit great kids, and we should compete better than we do...but it's hard to compete with handcuffs on.....open it up a little, take chances, be un-predictable for once and maybe, just maybe Iowa will see some good out of it.....and if that happens I might just take that leap off the ledge and pray to God that someone has a net below, because I will not believe for a minute what I just saw....We are not the Bama's of the world, but we could be in our own little world we live in with just a little imagination and maybe a little more courage....
 
Thanks for sharing that you have watched all the Ferrets games. And thank you for spray painting that turd gold
 
Nice post OP, but I for one will keep an even distance between the ledge and the bandwagon. They should get better, but I wouldn't wager more than a sodie on that one. We all want to jump on the Hawk bandwagon in the end.

One thing that I can state for sure is that if I was a young QB recruit or the parents of that recruit I would never ever send him to an Iowa team under Greg Davis - would you?????
 
When people offer the OP's reasons for Iowa's slow starts, it only allows KF to continue with his cliche-speak, non-answers to any question raised. That is years past old, especially with the abysmal offensive display thus far this season. I think most fans would be willing to cut KF some slack if he actually spoke to the issues instead of treating us like we do not understand football. He insults our intelligence every week with his post-game comments and the press is too timid to ask a follow-up question that might require a real answer.

KF has been given the benefit of the doubt time and time again and frankly, it's gone on long enough. It's time for him to demonstrate his understanding of today's college game and why we should be confident in his leadership of the Iowa football program.
 
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