I guess I was under the impression that we had one of the top olines in the nation going into the season with an extreemely talented back and a deep receiving corp. Certainly an offense capable of scoring on a crappy D. Yet we managed to do do next to nothing for three quarters. You're right homer, you'll never understand.
Remind me how many prior career starts Gettis has? What prior experience does Scherff or Tobin have?
How much time did Coker miss during fall camp? How about Martin-Manley?
I fully agree with you that the O has the talent to do well. However, particularly at the beginning of the season, the O rarely is rarely roaring on all cylinders. Many O's are "systems" where nearly everything works out of a single formation ... and that simplifies things for both the players and the coaches. In those Os, it's often easier to execute. In our O, believe it or not, things are often a bit more complicated ... we use many different formations ... each formation can have different blocking assignments ... each formation can have a lot of different plays ... each situation has different reads and adjustments ... etc.
Hopefully it isn't a surprise to realize that with all that stuff that our guys have to get down ... a lot of stuff that young and/or inexperienced guys, no less, have to get down ... that there are mistakes. There are A LOT of mistakes ... a lot of poor execution.
However, what happens to people after they've learned material ... and then they start getting more comfortable with it? All of a sudden they have a greater level of fluency and they're more capable of applying what they're learning. Similarly, football players, the more game reps they get ... the more chance that they get to learn from their own game-film ... the more they can improve!
That is what I was getting at!
What's more ... if you've watched enough college games ... whenever you have a transition at QB ... invariably there will be a shift in the identity of the O. The O doesn't always gain that identity in game one. Often it takes a game, much like the one against Pitt, to really forge the identity of the unit. And, oddly enough, at Iowa those games are usually losses ... albeit rather exciting ones.
I think that if you look back to 2008 ... you'll see that Stanzi had a similar sort of game that really forged the identity of that group. Similarly, Tate had such a game in '04 (the loss to Michigan).