OL Observations

[Raziel]

After rewatching the game twice, watching only the OL, I feel pretty confident in ranking the performances in the following order:

1. Reiff and Zus - definitely the most dominating performances of the day. They both have room for improvement, but when watching OL film, you always rewind when a play gets blown up or if an assignment gets missed. I rarely, if ever, had to rewind to see what either of these two guys did wrong. I'm excited to see how much better these guys get as the season progresses.

2. Julian Vandervelde - He already looks much better than he did last season, IMO. Last year he seemed pretty inconsistent (even against UNI)...yesterday he played pretty well....not as well as Reiff/Zus, he did have a couple of missed assignments/plays where he got beat, but overall, I was happy with is performance.

3. Nolan MacMillan - Nolan is a RS FR...and that showed, IMO. He definitely has talent, but he has not developed the consistency of an upperclassmen yet (which is to be expected). When looking at plays that were blown up....NM was responsible for a few...but overall he did OK considering this was his first ever game experience. He's definitely got potential, and if he develops like he should, I think he'll probably be the guy to replace Vandervelde next season.

4. James Ferentz - My biggest worry coming into the season was center....and that remains my biggest worry after watching the game yesterday. This was just the first game of the season, so he'll improve throughout the year....but he struggled when taking on DT's. James did OK when taking on LB's, but he was regularly pushed into the backfield when taking on DT's. I hope he can improve throughout the year, because I really like the rest of our OL.

Our OL should improve quite a bit next week with the addition of Gettis and another week of practice. I should note that I was also impressed with the #2's at the end of the game (more specifically, I was impressed with Woody Orne and Conner Boffelli). If James Ferentz can continue to improve, I think we're going to definitely have a better OL unit than we had last season. Of course, this was against quite inferior competition, but they looked much better against EIU than we did last season against UNI.

 

[HawkeyeDenis]

I didn't see anything that scared me after watching the game twice, but overall the lineplay was inconsistant. There are more positives than negatives, but with nearly a full month of practice I thought they would be sharper. They gave up two sacks, missed assignments and at times were a bit pourous. On the other hand. The team rushed for nearly 200 yards. Rick had plenty of time to throw the ball most of the time.

I don't know if they will be better than last year's line but they had a good opening game. I too am concerned about James at center. James and Rick cost the team a TD. I hope its not going to be a problem like a few years ago when we had a new center. ISU has a very active D line and blitz package so next week will be a solid test.

 

[Ozhawk]

I didn't see anything that scared me after watching the game twice, but overall the lineplay was inconsistant. There are more positives than negatives, but with nearly a full month of practice I thought they would be sharper. They gave up two sacks, missed assignments and at times were a bit pourous. On the other hand. The team rushed for nearly 200 yards. Rick had plenty of time to throw the ball most of the time.

I don't know if they will be better than last year's line but they had a good opening game. I too am concerned about James at center. James and Rick cost the team a TD. I hope its not going to be a problem like a few years ago when we had a new center. ISU has a very active D line and blitz package so next week will be a solid test.

One of the sacks was a corner blitz. Rick should have seen it and I can't remember if a back was in or not but the oline cant do much about a corner blitz

 

[Raziel]

One of the sacks was a corner blitz. Rick should have seen it and I can't remember if a back was in or not but the oline cant do much about a corner blitz

Yeah, I thought blitz pick up was actually pretty good for the first game...the did quite a bit of blitzing up the middle and our guys did pick that up OK.

 

[JonDMiller]

I did notice a few plays where James was taken a yard or two into the backfield..something like that will come and it can be a matter of technique and staying low...low man wins, as you hear a lot of people say.

 

[thawks1]

Zus was way to upright on a number of plays I watched. You can get away with that againt a team like we played- not better teams.

Communication must improve to paly to the level we need to be as good as we think the hawks can be.

 

[Billso]

These observations are appreciated. Obviously, we will learn so much more next week.

 

[gnfnr]

2. Julian Vandervelde - He already looks much better than he did last season, IMO. Last year he seemed pretty inconsistent (even against UNI)...yesterday he played pretty well....not as well as Reiff/Zus, he did have a couple of missed assignments/plays where he got beat, but overall, I was happy with is performance.

It is impossible to be more consistent than JV was during the UNI game a year ago. I think you should go back and spend some more time breaking down the film from the Iowa - UNI game

 

[homerHAWKeye777]

I noticed James getting pushed back a bit. However, I also liked how he was fighting in the trenches. He wasn't getting knocked off his feet too much.