IowaLaw's 1st Quarter Report Card

IowaLawWasRight

IowaLawWasRight

Well-Known Member
Four weeks of college football are officially in the books. The cream is rising to the top. The Hawks are who most thought we were. 3-1, winning the games that we were supposed to win and losing the games we were supposed to lose. Thanks to a weak Big 10 west, the Hawks still have a shot at a 10 win season and there is room for optimism. Back by popular demand, the 1st Quarter grades are in with Iowa's corresponding conference ranking.

1. Total Offense - tied for 10th (D+): The Hawkeye offense is averaging just 393 yards per game despite bringing back last year's top QB, WR, TEs, and most of the starting OL. Brian is in year 2 of his $700,000 apprenticeship, but the play calling gaffes and delay of game randying around continues week after week. The offensive production is identical to the poor results that Greg Davis fired. Play calling remains void of innovation with very few shots taken down the field. The QB sneak call straight at a 340 lb nose tackle on 4th down vs. Wisconsin showed the ultra conservative apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

2. Total Defense - 1st (A+): The Hawks are giving up just 13 points per game, despite Wisc scoring 14 points in the last minute of play. I have been handing out grades for years and can't remember a time where the Hawks ranked #1 in a major stat like total defense. The LBs were a huge question mark coming in because none were deemed worthy of playing time last year. They've held their own, while the DL has played at an elite level. DBs were a concern as well, with all of the attrition we suffered, but they've held strong. Kudos to Coach Parker on a job well done with the Big 10's best defense!

3. Passing Offense - 6th (B-): The Hawks are throwing for 226 passing yards per game. Nate Stanley came into the season with an unusual level of hype for a Hawkeye QB, with some touting him as a top 5 QB taken in the 2019 NFL draft. At WR, we all knew that the coaching staff whiffed on bringing in a game changing WR to take the pressure off Stanley. The end result, thus far, has been very little WR involvement and a majority of throws going to TEs. Most of the 10+ scholarship WRs continue to be non-factors, and it's time we reevaluate WR recruiting. On the plus side, Stanley has upped his completion percentage from 55% to 63%. He increased his yards per attempt from 6.9 to 8.3. On the negative, he's already thrown 4 interceptions in 4 games when he threw just 6 in 2017.

4. Rushing Offense - 8th (C): None of Iowa's RBs had received significant playing time coming into the season, so the rushing offense was hard to predict. 167 yards per game for an average of 4.1 yards per carry was right about what could be expected. All 3 of our RBs are just sophomores, so there is plenty of room for improvement, and all three have shown flashes of big time potential.

5. Sacks - 3rd (A): The Hawks already have 13 sacks this year for 100 yards of loss. Many sacks have come when we needed them the most. We only had 27 sacks all last season even with 2 first team all Americans on the team. I've said it before, but we have never had a guy as good as Epenesa as a 2nd teamer, and that speaks volumes about the skill level we have on the DL.

6. Net Punting - 3rd (A-): And the most improved player in the Big Ten's 1st Quarter goes to...Colten Raestatter! He went from last in the conference in punting to nearly the top in just a year. More importantly, I can't remember seeing any of his puts returned. We know what a difference a shanked punt (ISU) can make in a game, and the Hawk's punting game has been consistently solid all year long.
 
Coaching (C)-The bad play calls in the Wisconsin game. Kirk was quoted as saying that he thinks it's a waste of time to call a timeout when there is a play that could be reviewed because the refs tell coaches all plays are reviewed. It's as if he was making excuses for not asking for a review on that ball Epenesa stripped that was called incomplete though it should have been ruled a fumble. He's not right in that it's always a waste of a timeout as I've seen teams calling timeouts in similar situations helping their cause and eventually getting the call on the field overturned because it gives the replay crew more time to discern whether such a kind of play should be reviewed.

The coaching in the previous three games has been acceptable but the performance in the Wisconsin game brings the grade down to a C.
 
Thank you Iowalaw for posting. However, I disagree with some fundamental things that you wrote. The stats certainly support your stance, I just think in our case the stats don’t tell the entire story.

I certainly don’t think the defense deserves an A+. First of all, we are lacking a playmaker at defensive tackle and playmakers at middle linebacker. This allowed Wisconsin to rush for 5-8 yards on first down the entire game. While our strength as a defense is in our defensive line, it is mostly due to a pass rush that we have been lacking in years past. But when we allow the opponent to run on us like that, we negate our strength. Also, our corners are young and our linebackers have not been able to cover the tight end or slot receivers as well as years past. We are all judging in hindsight, and the Wisconsin game is the focus because we lost. However, what is more concerning to me is the second half of the northern Iowa game. Stats tell us we had the game in hand and they scored a couple meaningless touchdowns. Watching the game though, we had our first team defense in and got picked apart by a very talented quarterback. This concerns me with respect to Purdue mostly, but anyone with an accurate quarterback.

I don’t think the offense is as bad as you say either, that it is a D+. While the numbers don’t support us having a top tier offense, we also don’t pad our stats or run up the score when we don’t need to. We do it to create depth in game time, respect for our opponents, and the ideology that a win is a win, no matter the score. Any Iowa team up a couple of scores is going to run the ball, a lot. And it makes sense to limit mistakes, to keep mileage off of our defense, and to play the probability. I believe we have an effective offense with respect to our philosophy.

In the end, it is who we are. I think if there is any negativity to be placed it is in the rigid philosophy of not giving up explosive plays. Parker talks about this all the time, like it is the most important stat he charts. However,
Situationally speaking, I would disagree that he needs to be that bold about it. He is just telegraphing to the other team that you aren’t going to get behind us and you will have to accurately throw underneath consistently to beat us. But hear me out here, when Wisconsin got the ball with 6 minutes left, what if we played man coverage with a single safety and brought some heat in the gaps. If hornibrook could have made a great throw and beat us over the top, atleast we get the ball back. But I think the unpredictability would have allowed us to utilize our strength of a pass rush. But that is a defensive thing.

Coaching wise, I think our game plan was rock solid, except for how we played on defense on that last drive. If we don’t make special teams errors in the two punts, catch a break on AJ’s strip sack, and convert on 4th and 1, and have our fullback make a decent block on the linebacker, all very high probable things, we are talking somewhere between 28-7 and 35-7 in the third quarter. At that time our defense would pin its ears back, Wisconsin has to throw and we make it worse.

We are 3-1. It’s a team game, and all parts of our team have contributed to this record we have.
 
SteveGarvey1 said:
Coaching (C)-The bad play calls in the Wisconsin game. Kirk was quoted as saying that he thinks it's a waste of time to call a timeout when there is a play that could be reviewed because the refs tell coaches all plays are reviewed. It's as if he was making excuses for not asking for a review on that ball Epenesa stripped that was called incomplete though it should have been ruled a fumble. He's not right in that it's always a waste of a timeout as I've seen teams calling timeouts in similar situations helping their cause and eventually getting the call on the field overturned because it gives the replay crew more time to discern whether such a kind of play should be reviewed.

The coaching in the previous three games has been acceptable but the performance in the Wisconsin game brings the grade down to a C.
Click to expand...

Yep, I disagree with the notion it's not worth a timeout. It's definitely worth it, especially in the 1st half when we rarely use all timeouts. The Hornibrook play probably had about an 80% chance to be overturned. I don't think there's enough time for them to thoroughly review every play unless there's a challenge.
 
I wonder if we are the only team in football that can come out of a stoppage in play and get a delay of game penalty?
 
IowaLawWasRight said:
Four weeks of college football are officially in the books. The cream is rising to the top. The Hawks are who mostds per game. Nate Stanley came into the season with an unusual level of hype for a Hawkeye

6ntly solid all year long.
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My first observation is there are 12 games in the regular season so after 4 games this should not be the 1st Qtr report but the 1st Third report.

If you did a 1st Qtr report after the first 3 games I think a 3-0 record and a bit of shaky offense with great defense would have given a B+ overall grade.
 
The report card is pretty accurate by I also think the offense overall is graded too low and D+. With Passing game at a B- the running game would have to be an F grade to avg D+. The running game had a throw away stat 1st qtr against NIU because of miscues, etc and two starting tackles being out of the game.

I think with more passes and pass yardage we see a little less running stats yet the 4.1 ypc avg is pretty good. I think only a few KF teams like 2002 and Greene in 2008 maybe avgd higher.

Keep up the good play, get rid of some mistakes and drops, and I see the hawks getting on a win streak. They need to have total confidence going into Minny.
 
hwk23 said:
Yep, I disagree with the notion it's not worth a timeout. It's definitely worth it, especially in the 1st half when we rarely use all timeouts. The Hornibrook play probably had about an 80% chance to be overturned. I don't think there's enough time for them to thoroughly review every play unless there's a challenge.
Click to expand...
OMG yes!!! How much value is there in taking multiple TOs to halftime with you? Which often happens. I thought right after the play they should look at that. We had a clear recovery and I agree with ya there's a dang good chance they've have over turned it.
 
Passing game — B-
+
Rushing game — C
=
Total Offense — D+

I.e. core math of anti-Ferentz bias
=
stupid conclusions
 
I would certainly like to see total yards around 425 plus, 450 ish. That would be great.
But I want efficient as well.
Say you never return a kick and you avg starting at the 20. That's 80 yards to drive. We are at 4.91 trips to the goal line, just by that. A few more yards would put us at 5. 5x7 is 35.
My point is that if more efficient and executing we're at 100% (I know that is impossible), we would be scoring 35 a game.
So yes yards needs to go up to allow for the human nature and mistakes, but so does deficiency and execution.
 
It's kind of tough to take the first three games and rate by offensive production based on those game plans. Iowa has historically kept it close to the vest in these games...in particular NIU and UNI. If you don't think we could have thrown the ball around in the second half against NIU and UNI...you would be wrong. We did what we always do...we work on running the ball almost exclusively.

I would say for the first three games...the record is the most important. I think a valid assessment of the offense will be how they perform in B10 play because a much larger segment of the playbook is in play. So far...there is nothing wrong offensively, other than red zone production on two drives. You can point to the QB sneak if you want...and we had 600 pounds that was attempting to double the nose...and Stanley is 240. I would have rather seen something different too...but you can hardly fault a coordinator for trusting two Sr. linemen and a large QB to get the job done. Credit goes to Wisconsin.

Against Wisconsin...we had guys open all night. Doesn't that credit go to Brian Ferentz? He can't throw the ball for Stanley in the fourth quarter you know. Stanley missed open guys that were schemed open. What more do you want him to do? People have complained for years about our guys don't get open. Was Fant open on his two TDs? Yes...and they were well designed and executed plays. Things are different...even if you don't notice it.
 
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