JonDMiller
Publisher/Founder
Q: What are the challenges for a player having to play in 20 degree temperatures?
Jared Clauss: For the older guys, not much. They have seen it for years as part of the Big Ten. When guys come into camp it’s nice and hot and when it gets cooler, the first or second year guys are wearing layers under their pads during practice sometimes because they have not experienced it growing up, guys from parts of the country that don’t sniff 20 degrees. Well skin gets thick both physically and metaphorically. When they are seniors they have spent three or four winters in Iowa. They are used to it by then. I remember Colin Cole had sleeves on as a freshman and didn’t much as a senior. Young guys haven’t been in the cold that much. They might be the only ones it would matter to. When it comes down to it it’s a mental thing in my opinion. If you let hot or cold weather get to you, it can affect you just like anything else. The only real difference maker in preparation for unusual weather is fluid intake before the game. Other than that, it’s a matter of what is in your head. If you think you will play bad in the cold, you probably will. I do not think that was a factor this past weekend.
Q: Adrian Clayborn said after the Minnesota lost that perhaps the team had lost its will to win. Some fans are saying the team quit on Saturday. What did you think of the effort you saw?
Clauss: No one is going to be able to know better than him. Adrian has been in the mix as a leader on that team for years. None of us on the outside will be able to have our hand on the pulse as much as he would. If he says that, he must have felt it. I don’t know if I would put it in those terms, because I saw a lot of good individual efforts out there. But what you didn’t see was that kind of momentum building, emotional high that you get off of great team play. You haven’t seen the defense slapping each other on the head, and getting as emotionally invested as they had earlier in the year. I don’t know if that is a matter of will or the other team is making plays. It’s tough to say, they had so much to play for and they were right there in the talk about the BCS. We have good talent this year and could’ve gotten a chance at a Big Ten title. When that’s taken from you it dampens things emotionally. The losses we had this year were so heartbreaking, they were a shadowy image of last year but on the wrong end of things. You know our last minute wins were tough on the teams we beat last year, well we were that team this year. That can drag on you when you are so close and you lose by an average of less than four points per game. It’s frustrating. I saw some good individual efforts, so I didn’t think the team quit but they didn’t have that pop or enthusiasm they needed as a group. I know when guys are fired up around you it’s contagious.
Q: Iowa has played this system on defense for a long, long time. It’s been successful more than it hasn’t, but opposing quarterbacks really had their way with Iowa this year. How much can we attribute the injuries at linebacker for this, do you believe?
Clauss: Injuries were huge. Before Nielsen got hurt he was having a great year. Tarpinian didn’t see the field as much in his career as he would have liked, but based on what the coaches said about him he had a lot of talent. Hunter was banged up a lot this year. You have guys that were playing high school football a year or two ago that were filling in nicely considering their age and experience, but there is a big step between high school foo9tball and Big Ten linebacker. I don’t claim to know all the coverages our LB’s were in or all of their responsibilities, but you would be hard pressed to find a team that loses their top four linebackers, or four of their top five in a zone scheme that ends up having a lot of success. But we ask the linebackers to do a lot, to play the run a man short in the box a lot of times, to play zone coverage, we don’t substitute much and that is a lot. It’s tough. If you think of how solid our LB play has been in the Ferentz era I don’t think you can say that schematically we are hamstringing our guys by the way we play. I am not ready to throw philosophy and schemes out as it relates to zone coverages. To say that a zone D is not worthwhile any more or playing a read, gap control defense against the run is somehow all of a sudden broken I think is short sighted.
We have had fantastic talent over the years at linebacker. I said that it will be hard to replace Angerer and Edds, two of the better cover LB’s in the Big Ten over their careers. Then when you try to do so with guys that start the season as three’s and four’s on the depth chart, that is tough. I commend them for their efforts. I thought James Morris did fantastic. When DiBona was in, he was solid and Johnson made some nice plays, but it’s tough to have that many injuries and have success. As it relates to the quarterbacks having success this year against Iowa, I think a lot of the teams that did have success against us had experienced quarterbacks, players that had played against Iowa before. Tolzein, Persa, Foles, Weber, Pryor, all of them had played Iowa before and patiently took what was given to them. Having said that, you don’t have wet grass against Northwetsern Klug doesn’t slip late in the game when he was rushing the passer and there is a sack and that drive is done. Tolzein doesn’t throw a dart on 4th down and we have a new scenario versus Wisconsin. We were close but didn’t develop that confidence to make the play. At Iowa, we don’t have the margin for error that other programs have, we just didn’t get the plays made when we needed to on defense. It’s not necessarily us dropping the ball so much as I thought it was other teams played really well.
Dan Persa is a fantastic quarterback who played a great game against us. Some will ask why did he play good against us? Sometimes that just happens, do you think our LB coverage was bad on some of his cross routes or the TD in the 2nd half? I thought we were right there and he just put it in the perfect spot…Foles…sound familiar? Terrell Pryor scrambling on fourth down; not many college quarterbacks can do that and everything was covered on the back end. He had to reverse field because the defense had stopped him from going the way he wanted to go. If I can remember he made Oregon look fairly elementary in the Rose Bowl last year, they seem to be having a good season this year. They didn’t change the entire playbook because of some great individual efforts versus them. I don’t think the schemes need to be changed or thrown out just because you don’t get the results you want. I can think back to when I played and we had a number of schemes in to stop Randle-El from scrambling. In case you don’t remember, that didn’t work all that well. It wasn’t because the scheme was bad, it was because I couldn’t tackle Antwan Randle-El. It’s not always x’s and o’s; you have to execute plays too. Was I a bad player because I couldn’t tackle him? I hope not. Is our scheme broken now? Not in my opinion, we just didn’t execute. Last year we made the plays, this year we didn’t find a way to do it.
Q: Iowa was averaging 51% third down completions and scoring 34 points per game through the Michigan State game, then they lost their top two right guards. Since then they have converted just 34% of their third downs. Do you think it’s as simple as attrition at that position?
Clauss: It’s like on defense; health has to play a part. Offense is different than defense where it’s so much more about continuity and timing. With defense, there is always responsibility and gap control, but it’s more individual effort out there. You have to play within the scheme to have success, but on offense it seems like we didn’t have the continuity that we needed to have. You keep rotating guys in and out, of course that will affect things. I think the offensive line improved during the year but unfortunately we had some dings on us at right guard with injuries. There was good wide receiver and tight end production this year. I thought Adam Robinson had a good year, Coker filled in nicely. But it was a matter of a play here and there. I challenge you to put on some of the good seasons in Iowa football history over the past decade. Watch some of those games. Yes, we had some teams and games where we had dominating offensive performance. But we won a lot of those games in a very close manner. It was not always blowouts. This is what we are accustomed to, we just didn’t get the big play when we needed to this year. I think last year spoiled us in terms of how truly remarkable some of those comebacks were and how we seemed to catch every break minus the OSU game. Those were not easily repeatable outcomes.
Q: Iowa has been a team that has grown from the end of the regular season to the bowl game. Putting yourself in the shoes of this year’s players, do you think this hangover will be something that can be flushed and do you think we will see a much better team in the bowl game?
Clauss: What I think happened, going back to an earlier point, is these guys came into this season with expectations put on to them from others. I’m sure they had high expectations for themselves too. But it was a bitter pill to swallow losing the games they did. These last three games it was like adding bricks to your shoulders. It got so heavy maybe it was too much for them on the emotional side I have no idea, maybe that’s what Adrian meant. In terms of the bowl game, I think this break, this time off will give the seniors time to realize this is their last game. I think they will flush this last month and show up and play well. You know we will prepare well and give young guys time to develop in these practices. I really do think they will come out firing.
Parting Shot from Clauss: A few weeks ago, I made a comment about how much more it means to the players after a loss verses what it means to the fans, and I felt that came across poorly. I know how much Iowa football means to the people in Iowa; we are the pro sport. I know how much people invest both emotionally and financially to support the Hawks. What I meant to say but didn’t convey is how different it is for the players because of their direct involvement. My apologies if that came out the wrong way as I know we have some of the best fans in the country and that is evident in our bowl travels, home attendance, road attendance versus rivals in the Big Ten and financial donations to keep us competitive with the bigger programs in the league.
Jared Clauss: For the older guys, not much. They have seen it for years as part of the Big Ten. When guys come into camp it’s nice and hot and when it gets cooler, the first or second year guys are wearing layers under their pads during practice sometimes because they have not experienced it growing up, guys from parts of the country that don’t sniff 20 degrees. Well skin gets thick both physically and metaphorically. When they are seniors they have spent three or four winters in Iowa. They are used to it by then. I remember Colin Cole had sleeves on as a freshman and didn’t much as a senior. Young guys haven’t been in the cold that much. They might be the only ones it would matter to. When it comes down to it it’s a mental thing in my opinion. If you let hot or cold weather get to you, it can affect you just like anything else. The only real difference maker in preparation for unusual weather is fluid intake before the game. Other than that, it’s a matter of what is in your head. If you think you will play bad in the cold, you probably will. I do not think that was a factor this past weekend.
Q: Adrian Clayborn said after the Minnesota lost that perhaps the team had lost its will to win. Some fans are saying the team quit on Saturday. What did you think of the effort you saw?
Clauss: No one is going to be able to know better than him. Adrian has been in the mix as a leader on that team for years. None of us on the outside will be able to have our hand on the pulse as much as he would. If he says that, he must have felt it. I don’t know if I would put it in those terms, because I saw a lot of good individual efforts out there. But what you didn’t see was that kind of momentum building, emotional high that you get off of great team play. You haven’t seen the defense slapping each other on the head, and getting as emotionally invested as they had earlier in the year. I don’t know if that is a matter of will or the other team is making plays. It’s tough to say, they had so much to play for and they were right there in the talk about the BCS. We have good talent this year and could’ve gotten a chance at a Big Ten title. When that’s taken from you it dampens things emotionally. The losses we had this year were so heartbreaking, they were a shadowy image of last year but on the wrong end of things. You know our last minute wins were tough on the teams we beat last year, well we were that team this year. That can drag on you when you are so close and you lose by an average of less than four points per game. It’s frustrating. I saw some good individual efforts, so I didn’t think the team quit but they didn’t have that pop or enthusiasm they needed as a group. I know when guys are fired up around you it’s contagious.
Q: Iowa has played this system on defense for a long, long time. It’s been successful more than it hasn’t, but opposing quarterbacks really had their way with Iowa this year. How much can we attribute the injuries at linebacker for this, do you believe?
Clauss: Injuries were huge. Before Nielsen got hurt he was having a great year. Tarpinian didn’t see the field as much in his career as he would have liked, but based on what the coaches said about him he had a lot of talent. Hunter was banged up a lot this year. You have guys that were playing high school football a year or two ago that were filling in nicely considering their age and experience, but there is a big step between high school foo9tball and Big Ten linebacker. I don’t claim to know all the coverages our LB’s were in or all of their responsibilities, but you would be hard pressed to find a team that loses their top four linebackers, or four of their top five in a zone scheme that ends up having a lot of success. But we ask the linebackers to do a lot, to play the run a man short in the box a lot of times, to play zone coverage, we don’t substitute much and that is a lot. It’s tough. If you think of how solid our LB play has been in the Ferentz era I don’t think you can say that schematically we are hamstringing our guys by the way we play. I am not ready to throw philosophy and schemes out as it relates to zone coverages. To say that a zone D is not worthwhile any more or playing a read, gap control defense against the run is somehow all of a sudden broken I think is short sighted.
We have had fantastic talent over the years at linebacker. I said that it will be hard to replace Angerer and Edds, two of the better cover LB’s in the Big Ten over their careers. Then when you try to do so with guys that start the season as three’s and four’s on the depth chart, that is tough. I commend them for their efforts. I thought James Morris did fantastic. When DiBona was in, he was solid and Johnson made some nice plays, but it’s tough to have that many injuries and have success. As it relates to the quarterbacks having success this year against Iowa, I think a lot of the teams that did have success against us had experienced quarterbacks, players that had played against Iowa before. Tolzein, Persa, Foles, Weber, Pryor, all of them had played Iowa before and patiently took what was given to them. Having said that, you don’t have wet grass against Northwetsern Klug doesn’t slip late in the game when he was rushing the passer and there is a sack and that drive is done. Tolzein doesn’t throw a dart on 4th down and we have a new scenario versus Wisconsin. We were close but didn’t develop that confidence to make the play. At Iowa, we don’t have the margin for error that other programs have, we just didn’t get the plays made when we needed to on defense. It’s not necessarily us dropping the ball so much as I thought it was other teams played really well.
Dan Persa is a fantastic quarterback who played a great game against us. Some will ask why did he play good against us? Sometimes that just happens, do you think our LB coverage was bad on some of his cross routes or the TD in the 2nd half? I thought we were right there and he just put it in the perfect spot…Foles…sound familiar? Terrell Pryor scrambling on fourth down; not many college quarterbacks can do that and everything was covered on the back end. He had to reverse field because the defense had stopped him from going the way he wanted to go. If I can remember he made Oregon look fairly elementary in the Rose Bowl last year, they seem to be having a good season this year. They didn’t change the entire playbook because of some great individual efforts versus them. I don’t think the schemes need to be changed or thrown out just because you don’t get the results you want. I can think back to when I played and we had a number of schemes in to stop Randle-El from scrambling. In case you don’t remember, that didn’t work all that well. It wasn’t because the scheme was bad, it was because I couldn’t tackle Antwan Randle-El. It’s not always x’s and o’s; you have to execute plays too. Was I a bad player because I couldn’t tackle him? I hope not. Is our scheme broken now? Not in my opinion, we just didn’t execute. Last year we made the plays, this year we didn’t find a way to do it.
Q: Iowa was averaging 51% third down completions and scoring 34 points per game through the Michigan State game, then they lost their top two right guards. Since then they have converted just 34% of their third downs. Do you think it’s as simple as attrition at that position?
Clauss: It’s like on defense; health has to play a part. Offense is different than defense where it’s so much more about continuity and timing. With defense, there is always responsibility and gap control, but it’s more individual effort out there. You have to play within the scheme to have success, but on offense it seems like we didn’t have the continuity that we needed to have. You keep rotating guys in and out, of course that will affect things. I think the offensive line improved during the year but unfortunately we had some dings on us at right guard with injuries. There was good wide receiver and tight end production this year. I thought Adam Robinson had a good year, Coker filled in nicely. But it was a matter of a play here and there. I challenge you to put on some of the good seasons in Iowa football history over the past decade. Watch some of those games. Yes, we had some teams and games where we had dominating offensive performance. But we won a lot of those games in a very close manner. It was not always blowouts. This is what we are accustomed to, we just didn’t get the big play when we needed to this year. I think last year spoiled us in terms of how truly remarkable some of those comebacks were and how we seemed to catch every break minus the OSU game. Those were not easily repeatable outcomes.
Q: Iowa has been a team that has grown from the end of the regular season to the bowl game. Putting yourself in the shoes of this year’s players, do you think this hangover will be something that can be flushed and do you think we will see a much better team in the bowl game?
Clauss: What I think happened, going back to an earlier point, is these guys came into this season with expectations put on to them from others. I’m sure they had high expectations for themselves too. But it was a bitter pill to swallow losing the games they did. These last three games it was like adding bricks to your shoulders. It got so heavy maybe it was too much for them on the emotional side I have no idea, maybe that’s what Adrian meant. In terms of the bowl game, I think this break, this time off will give the seniors time to realize this is their last game. I think they will flush this last month and show up and play well. You know we will prepare well and give young guys time to develop in these practices. I really do think they will come out firing.
Parting Shot from Clauss: A few weeks ago, I made a comment about how much more it means to the players after a loss verses what it means to the fans, and I felt that came across poorly. I know how much Iowa football means to the people in Iowa; we are the pro sport. I know how much people invest both emotionally and financially to support the Hawks. What I meant to say but didn’t convey is how different it is for the players because of their direct involvement. My apologies if that came out the wrong way as I know we have some of the best fans in the country and that is evident in our bowl travels, home attendance, road attendance versus rivals in the Big Ten and financial donations to keep us competitive with the bigger programs in the league.
