Interesting Analysis of Iowa NFL Draft Success v Recruiting Rankings

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Ferentz 3.0 is all about realizing that no one gives a **** about how many NFL players you create out of nothing unless those players create championships.
 
DwayneTwill said:
I hope that's the case.
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Here Here! Hopefully Ferentz 3.0 realizes that to win in today's college football:

On offense you have to be able to spread the field 4 or 5 wide and then run the football out of that formation,

On defense you must blitz non-senior quarterbacks.

If you ask me (which no one does) those two things are responsible for our NFL talent to W/L under performance Ratio.

If you have any questions read BHGP's series on Statistical InFerentz.
 
My two cents on why we send multiple players to the NFL but don't win more...

Quality Depth is the main reason. You can have all the talent in the world, but you are as strong as your weakest link. Your weakest link will get exploited. For instance, in 2010 we were down to Koeppel at guard who I think was 3/4/5th string or something like that. We regularly got exploited up the middle the latter part of the year. Nothing that Reiff could do about that at LT. We had a true freshman playing middle linebacker and another (Neilson) that could barely move that year. Our linebackers got exploited the latter part of the year.

This point was driven home to me watching the high school team where I live. I live in North Phoenix, Az, and the high school team that my kids will eventually go to was rated #2 in their division regularly winning 55-7 or 42-17 most of the year. 3 players got injured in the second half of the 3rd to last game. The last two games and in the playoffs this team got beat on average of 50-7. The team they played in the playoffs that they already pounded earlier in the year, won 55-21. It doesn't take a lot of injuries, and if you cannot replace injuries with capable backups then you will get exploited.

This is really not in defense of KF as he has made some ,um, conservative in game decisions and it is his and his staff's job to get the backups ready to play, but I think that while Iowa has as good of top 28-30 players as anyone most years, Iowa lacks quality depth at some positions and we don't have another 4/5* stud that are physically ready to play to plug in like other teams that send players to the draft as regularly as we do.

My $.02... take it or leave it.
 
azhawkphan nailed it. The only addition I would suggest is that if you look at the specific positions for Iowa's drafted players, you may want to consider that some spots have more impact on wins/losses than others. I.E., QB's, wide receivers who are game breakers, big time running backs, dominating defensive linemen. Iowa has not had a lot of players in these categories over the years. But, the depth issue is certainly the major factor, imho.
 
Iowa's coaches have been great at developing talent when it gets to campus and their pro style offense and defense also explain the NFL success. The problem is the in game coaching decisions and conservatism cost them 2-3 losses per year. There is no team worse at clock management than the Hawkeyes, which costs them points at the end of halves and games. Almost all other successful teams take chances in the final 2 minutes. I have often wondered if Iowa even has a 2 minute offense with the way they curl into a ball and handle those situations. THey are so afraid of a mistake, they do nothing. Hopefully the coaching changes can help solve this problem so all the NFL players can produce wins on the field.
 
Yeah, Iowa does get a good number of players drafted...HOWEVER, the majority of them get drafted in rounds 4-7. Alabama, meanwhile, will see the majority of their players go in the first couple rounds. That is a HUGE difference. Do not try and compare Iowa to schools like Alabama because we have similar draft numbers.

Adam Gettis and Jordan Bernstine were drafted in late rounds. Neither one had overly impressive college careers. Basically, a roster full of these types of players should not raise everyone's expected win totals.
 
Answer this question and I think you'll answer your own question:

which would you rather have: 4 1st/2nd round picks or 6 picks, but only 1 being in the first 3 rounds?
 
azhawkphan said:
My two cents on why we send multiple players to the NFL but don't win more...

Quality Depth is the main reason. You can have all the talent in the world, but you are as strong as your weakest link. Your weakest link will get exploited. For instance, in 2010 we were down to Koeppel at guard who I think was 3/4/5th string or something like that. We regularly got exploited up the middle the latter part of the year. Nothing that Reiff could do about that at LT. We had a true freshman playing middle linebacker and another (Neilson) that could barely move that year. Our linebackers got exploited the latter part of the year.

This point was driven home to me watching the high school team where I live. I live in North Phoenix, Az, and the high school team that my kids will eventually go to was rated #2 in their division regularly winning 55-7 or 42-17 most of the year. 3 players got injured in the second half of the 3rd to last game. The last two games and in the playoffs this team got beat on average of 50-7. The team they played in the playoffs that they already pounded earlier in the year, won 55-21. It doesn't take a lot of injuries, and if you cannot replace injuries with capable backups then you will get exploited.

This is really not in defense of KF as he has made some ,um, conservative in game decisions and it is his and his staff's job to get the backups ready to play, but I think that while Iowa has as good of top 28-30 players as anyone most years, Iowa lacks quality depth at some positions and we don't have another 4/5* stud that are physically ready to play to plug in like other teams that send players to the draft as regularly as we do.

My $.02... take it or leave it.
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I agree with the depth aspect...Iowa has an undeniable track record of turning middle of the pack recruits into NFL draftees. But when those guys go down, the harsh realities Iowa faces in recruiting come to bear...every diamond in the rough will not turn out to be a valuable diamond.
 
Anyone who is a hawk fan and actually has any semblance of objectivity finds this info to be completely obvious. Kirk Ferentz is a fantastic teacher and a poor gameday coach. I've said this for years. Hopefully the change in staff changes this, but I find it hard to believe that he will let the reigns go as much as he needs to for this program to take the next step forward.
 
Travisam said:
Anyone who is a hawk fan and actually has any semblance of objectivity finds this info to be completely obvious. Kirk Ferentz is a fantastic teacher and a poor gameday coach. I've said this for years. Hopefully the change in staff changes this, but I find it hard to believe that he will let the reigns go as much as he needs to for this program to take the next step forward.
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This is an interesting discussion. Certainly some fascinating numbers that put a different light on the program (or, perhaps, for some confirming what they've long felt about the program.) My takeaway is that I hope you are correct in this and that fresh thinking will produce more wins. It is too much to hope that Kirk puts more faith in his new coordinators to execute a winning game plan?
 
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