New late 2011 commit!

[MultipleDundieAwardWinner]

Awesome, Hope this turns into one of those diamond in the rough stories for Iowa.

What I keep wondering, what was this kid gonna do if Iowa didn't offer? Was he planning on going to a small school?

What many of you guys seem to fail to realize is that when you look for diamonds in the rough, you get more rough than diamonds.

All teams need warm bodies for practice, and it looks like you found one (a 5.3 40? geesh)

 

[MultipleDundieAwardWinner]

He doesn't need to run a 4.6. Kid will probably never run 40 yards on the field in his career at Iowa. 40 time is the #1 most over rated metric in football. Quickness can be worked on. Being a hard worker, THAT you can't teach.

Umm, linemen run 40 yards all the time! Is this a serious post?

A football field is 53 yards wide. If a player is at right end, and they run to the left sideline, he runs 40+ yards easy. Or in this guy's case, slowly ambles to the sideline.

 

[DP5555]

I agree with Homer, I'm not sure what you are thinking CAARHawk. Klug and Kroul are great comparisons for this kid. I don't know what you mean by the "frame" comment. Kroul has just as big of a frame as Klug does. I played against Kroul my junior and senior year of H.S. and at that time he was 6'2 or 6'3 and about 240. He was every bit as big as Klug was coming in the Iowa program, probably bigger. As far as Iowa needing NFL caliber linemen to win BCS games... how do you know this kid won't develop into a great player? You know as well as I do that Ferentz and his staff develop kids like him into great ballplayers all the time. I just think you're being a little pessimistic. This is Ferentz's style and it's worked wonders for the Hawks in the past.

 

[homerHAWKeye777]

I agree with Homer, I'm not sure what you are thinking CAARHawk. Klug and Kroul are great comparisons for this kid. I don't know what you mean by the "frame" comment. Kroul has just as big of a frame as Klug does. I played against Kroul my junior and senior year of H.S. and at that time he was 6'2 or 6'3 and about 240. He was every bit as big as Klug was coming in the Iowa program, probably bigger. As far as Iowa needing NFL caliber linemen to win BCS games... how do you know this kid won't develop into a great player? You know as well as I do that Ferentz and his staff develop kids like him into great ballplayers all the time. I just think you're being a little pessimistic. This is Ferentz's style and it's worked wonders for the Hawks in the past.

I think that some Hawk fans forget that we don't need ALL of our guys to be "plug and play" players. What we DO need is for guys to work hard and eventually contribute ... and just as long as a guy sticks with the program, that tends to happen more often than not.

We're already going to have guys like Carl Davis, Darian Cooper, and Jaleel Johnson as more "plug and play" guys .... guys who are already start their career off with a head start when it comes to their frame and/or size. However, such guys aren't always the vocal leader types. That's where guys like Mike Daniels and Dean Tsopanides come into the picture .... they busts their butts, lead by example, and eventually and/or hopefully they become important contributors.

 

[homerHAWKeye777]

Umm, linemen run 40 yards all the time! Is this a serious post?

A football field is 53 yards wide. If a player is at right end, and they run to the left sideline, he runs 40+ yards easy. Or in this guy's case, slowly ambles to the sideline.

Unless a guy is already on record for busting his behind training to run a good 40 .... reported 40 times are often pretty useless. They rarely end up capturing the true speed and/or athleticism of the athlete.

As a case in point, Iowa's Amari Spievey was clocked in at a shade over 4.6 out of high school ... and he was a skill player who presumably had worked some on his 40. During training at Iowa, Amari regularly put up times in the 4.4s.

Considering that Tsopanides played in the trenches and didn't play for a team that got much attention, he likely never worked much on the specialized task of running the 40. That, in itself, could have easily cost him dearly with regard to his listed 40 time. Anyhow, just because he doesn't have a good 40 time doesn't mean that he doesn't have decent speed .... and, more importantly, it doesn't mean that he doesn't have excellent football speed. After all, often when a guy is pursuing the ball ... it's not just straight-ahead running .... there's usually a lot of lateral movement too.

Anyhow, the prior poster was quite right is asserting that the 40 time is a rather overrated metric when it comes to evaluating football players.

 

[alexzelada]

Or a Klug, King, Kroul, or Geary redux?

Good one. Caar is using glass-half-empty logic. I'm using glass-half-full logic, but why not be an optimist? Being a pessimist before a kid steps on campus seems to be a reflection of a poster's natural negativity.

From Scout: (coming out of high school)

Kroul 6-2 215 LB

King 6-3 230 LB

McCracken 6-3 215 DE

Lucas Cox 6-4 235 DE

Klug 6-4 240 LB

Using all the different measurements I found on Dean he looks to be anywhere from 6-2 220 to 6-4 240. He certainly is within the Hawkeye DL range.

 

[DexterMorgan]

Umm, linemen run 40 yards all the time! Is this a serious post?

A football field is 53 yards wide. If a player is at right end, and they run to the left sideline, he runs 40+ yards easy. Or in this guy's case, slowly ambles to the sideline.

Hash marks are 20 yards from the sideline. So he wouldn't be easily running 40+ yards unless he's running out of bounds or chasing down the sideline.

Lineman very rarely run 40 yards. If they do they're chasing someone down and odds are none of them are going to catch them rather they run a 5.6 or a 4.6.

I'm not saying this guy is going to be worth a ****, simply that 40 yard dash is an over rated measure of football speed. I'd be much more interest in a players first ten yards.