Iowa Needs a New Act

[goods10]

Iowa doesn't need to change anything on the O side or D side of the ball. Plain and simple the Special Teams need to be cleaned up. Period. I am sure 99% of the people on HawkeyeNation.com watched the game Saturday night. I don't get all of the talk about how the D lost the game or the O line lost the game. Clearly the Special Teams mistakes lost the game. No question about it. The coaches will get that fixed and I truly feel that Iowa will be just fine the rest of the way. Go Hawks!

 

[Hawkize1]

This week at practice Iowa needs to work on 2 things:
1.) Kick off coverage: ISUx had some pretty long returns, Arizona took one 101 yds to the house. Enough said.
2.)Blitz packages for our offense to defense: Arizona pinned their ears back and came with everything. Stanzi had no place to go. An audible to a tight end screen in the middle that was vacated by the blitzing linebackers would have gone for 25 yrds easliy. Yet that wasn't given to Ricky as an option. Arizona blitzed 3 straight plays on the last series of downs.
These things are Iowa's weakness after this game...All the big ten teams Iowa plays will be seeing this tape and will employ the same strategy, unless Iowa can demonstrate the ability to overcome these weaknesses.
PSU will blitz, Michigan State will blitz...hell, they will all blitz to some degree.
Ricky should be able to make a blitz call at the line to alert the receiver to break off their routes to a "hot" route to give Ricky a chance.
Other than that some tweaking here or there and we'll be ok.

 

[silvanthalas]

Exactly. Hasn't this "act" won 17 out of 20 games?

And before that, it lost quite a few games. IIRC, Iowa under Ferentz has a very poor record when trailing going into the 4th quarter, and not all of it can be attributed to those first couple of years.

Sure, we won several of those games last year, but history is not on the team's side in this regard.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

This week at practice Iowa needs to work on 2 things:
1.) Kick off coverage: ISUx had some pretty long returns, Arizona took one 101 yds to the house. Enough said.
2.)Blitz packages for our offense to defense: Arizona pinned their ears back and came with everything. Stanzi had no place to go. An audible to a tight end screen in the middle that was vacated by the blitzing linebackers would have gone for 25 yrds easliy. Yet that wasn't given to Ricky as an option. Arizona blitzed 3 straight plays on the last series of downs.
These things are Iowa's weakness after this game...All the big ten teams Iowa plays will be seeing this tape and will employ the same strategy, unless Iowa can demonstrate the ability to overcome these weaknesses.
PSU will blitz, Michigan State will blitz...hell, they will all blitz to some degree.
Ricky should be able to make a blitz call at the line to alert the receiver to break off their routes to a "hot" route to give Ricky a chance.
Other than that some tweaking here or there and we'll be ok.

Cant't argue with anything you mentioned. Also, does Iowa have a draw play in their arsenal? I thought they did but that cold have been utilized Sat..

You better believe those other teams mentioned will be watching tape of the AZ game & the blitzes will come at a greater pace. The problem is that the blitzes predominantly came up the middle which is disturbing. The O-line couldn't solidify the middle & the middle is the quickest way to the QB. That game exploited the young Iowa O-lineman & teams will try to take advantage. Maybe that is a good thing for Iowa to curve that.

Iowa never attempted to roll Stanzi out either. I'm not sure if this is because of the young O-line & they were trying to keep it simple or what.

 

[keswhisk]

I was thinking about this this morning on the way to work.

While O'Keefe seems to typically have a decent game plan entering a game and adjusting with minor tweaks on the fly there are problems that could be fixed.

The fact that we were just chucking the ball deep on play after play after we got down by 14 points EARLY speaks to his over reaction to the situation. I noticed that once we started attempting runs, even if they were for no gain, the Play action still worked yet I never really saw during much of the game.

It is almost like he has 2 modes Conservative and Ultra Aggressive. I think this 'act' does need a little changing.

That being said Special Teams are the main concern going forward.