If you think that the coaches don't give those athletes any input on whether to redshirt or not, you're crazy. As the season began we had a running back go down, and another dismissed from the team, and one healing from an injury in the spring. The well was not deep to begin with, and per usual, got more shallow as the season went on.
As for the weight room comment... A couple of years in a dedicated, supervised, strength and conditioning program would be huge compared to what a lot of kids have in high school. Don't be so quick to discount the Coach Doyle. I didn't say he would be turned into a power back... But the kid just wasn't strong enough (yet) to play D1 football.
If you think a coach "giving input" to a play is the same as "telling they can't redshirt" is the same thing then you're just as crazy as me my friend.
If the coaches felt he was ready and Garmon felt he was ready that was a decision they made together, sure maybe we don't know. Looks like now it was a bad choice regardless of who made it. Must like their recruitment of Garmon and his committment to come to Iowa and to play in this zone scheme, bad desicion.
Hindsight is 20/20 as they always say. I disagree he wasn't strong enough to play D1 football, he wasn't strong enough to play RB at Iowa the way Iowa traditional uses RBs and that isn't a good fit. Another season of weight training wasn't going to change the fact that he isn't the right style of RB for Iowa.
He was 2 inches taller than Coker and possibly as much as 30-40 pounds lighter. He wasn't going to change that much in a year and Marcus still struggled at times with Iowa's zone scheme.