Our coach is just built different & I love it

[Hawkfnntn]

Name me another coach or team that when trailing in the 4th q would accept a penalty when if he declined it that woulda made it 4th down?
Not very flipping many I bet. I thought it at the time there's some risk with that. Because any defensive penalty besides an off sides woulda gave them an automatic 1st down. That to me was the risk not them converting a 3rd and 20 plus or whatever it ended up being.

But he had the utmost faith in that D to not only not do that but our fans backed em up 5 more yards with a false start after that so they punted from their end zone. Which then lead directly to the Petras to Nico play right after it. That is some next level coaching in the moment that probably gained us 20-30 yards in field position and we all know how valuable even 10 yards can be with how we play. There's an argument to be made that that decision was everything to us winning.

 

[haydensly]

Name me another coach or team that when trailing in the 4th q would accept a penalty when if he declined it that woulda made it 4th down?
Not very flipping many I bet. I thought it at the time there's some risk with that. Because any defensive penalty besides an off sides woulda gave them an automatic 1st down. That to me was the risk not them converting a 3rd and 20 plus or whatever it ended up being.

But he had the utmost faith in that D to not only not do that but our fans backed em up 5 more yards with a false start after that so they punted from their end zone. Which then lead directly to the Petras to Nico play right after it. That is some next level coaching in the moment that probably gained us 20-30 yards in field position and we all know how valuable even 10 yards can be with how we play. There's an argument to be made that that decision was everything to us winning.

I remember that penalty and thought at the time that we should accept it. It was a 15 yarder (IIRC) and I felt there was little chance of them even throwing the ball at that point for fear of an interception. And, as you point out, that was followed by a false-start penalty. Which was followed by probably the shortest punt of the day by the Penn State punter, who was fantastic all day long.

You're right, every yard was important in that sequence because Ragani made the touchdown on the next play by the skin of his teeth.

 

[Hawkfnntn]

I remember that penalty and thought at the time that we should accept it. It was a 15 yarder (IIRC) and I felt there was little chance of them even throwing the ball at that point for fear of an interception. And, as you point out, that was followed by a false-start penalty. Which was followed by probably the shortest punt of the day by the Penn State punter, who was fantastic all day long.

You're right, every yard was important in that sequence because Ragani made the touchdown on the next play by the skin of his teeth.

Yeah and I wonder if it'd not been that and say a 10 yard holding instead would he have still done it? I bet so. He wasn't counting on the extra 5 more yards from the false start after it but he just had faith in that D not giving up a chunk play or a penalty to force them to punt from further back.

It's such a flex of a move to put on Franklin too. Just showing his offense no respect at all and he was right to do so. I just don't want that sequence of events to be forgotten cause without that happening it's hard telling what woulda.

 

[ssckelley]

I was surprised at the move but I loved it. We were getting amped and the noise just kept getting louder and louder after each penalty.

 

[Theforgottenman]

That was my favorite series of plays. Risky but very aggressive game management call. Shows great confidence in the D but on the downside I think it also demonstrates the lack of confidence in our offense to get first downs. Great situational play calling though, worked out better than I could have imagined and was a key difference maker in the game!

 

[Luftgekuehlt67]

I also called something out in the game thread. When Iowa got the ball late and sat on it to the point they were going to have to give the ball back to PSU, someone made the comment that KF has never had the guts to be aggressive in this situation.

To which I pointed out it was more about having the insight of knowing that ST and D are the strengths of this team.

Trying to push the ball into the teeth of an elite defense would take guts. Putting the game back into the hands of your own elite ST and D takes smarts.

Big brain KF.

 

[uihawk82]

Name me another coach or team that when trailing in the 4th q would accept a penalty when if he declined it that woulda made it 4th down?
Not very flipping many I bet. I thought it at the time there's some risk with that. Because any defensive penalty besides an off sides woulda gave them an automatic 1st down. That to me was the risk not them converting a 3rd and 20 plus or whatever it ended up being.

But he had the utmost faith in that D to not only not do that but our fans backed em up 5 more yards with a false start after that so they punted from their end zone. Which then lead directly to the Petras to Nico play right after it. That is some next level coaching in the moment that probably gained us 20-30 yards in field position and we all know how valuable even 10 yards can be with how we play. There's an argument to be made that that decision was everything to us winning.

The play where the chop block personal foul occurred resulted in what would be a 3rd and 9 for Penn St. My first thought was decline it but the backing them up to about their 13 sounded tough for penn st.

It was a big time coaching decision for sure that sort of went against the general coaching decisions. But 2nd and 24 and then 2nd and 29 backed up by their endzone was tough for that penn st QB

 

[uihawk82]

I also called something out in the game thread. When Iowa got the ball late and sat on it to the point they were going to have to give the ball back to PSU, someone made the comment that KF has never had the guts to be aggressive in this situation.

To which I pointed out it was more about having the insight of knowing that ST and D are the strengths of this team.

Trying to push the ball into the teeth of an elite defense would take guts. Putting the game back into the hands of your own elite ST and D takes smarts.

Big brain KF.

After Iowa took the lead penn st got a first down then turned the ball over on downs with about 3:40 left. Penn st had 3 time outs. Goodson good gain of 6, then a short gain and a timeout, then the LAME ASS play call I thought on 3rd and 3 for the hawks.

You remember it, Petras was called on to rollout and if the receiver was open throw it, which he wasnt, so petras just went down. Now with just over 2 mintues to go and first down is just about killing the clock time.

Why not on third and 3 give it to Goodson and maybe risk the fumble or even better run petras on a surprise QB sneak. Who knows as we get some great yardage on those sneaks.

And then the Dee held again after the punt and as others mentioned Hankins should have just batted the ball down to give us the ball at about the 8 yard line. Now penn st used their last timeout after 1st down so Kirk just decided to be ultra conservative taking a knee twice knowing it was high odds that that they couldnt score.

But again I am with you and I might have tried 3 QB sneaks during this possession to gain yardage and put some pressure on the Penn St Dee.

 

[uihawk82]

I also called something out in the game thread. When Iowa got the ball late and sat on it to the point they were going to have to give the ball back to PSU, someone made the comment that KF has never had the guts to be aggressive in this situation.

To which I pointed out it was more about having the insight of knowing that ST and D are the strengths of this team.

Trying to push the ball into the teeth of an elite defense would take guts. Putting the game back into the hands of your own elite ST and D takes smarts.

Big brain KF.

And Taylor is such a great punter after all that was done he put psu on the 8 yard line.

 

[Hawkfnntn]

I also called something out in the game thread. When Iowa got the ball late and sat on it to the point they were going to have to give the ball back to PSU, someone made the comment that KF has never had the guts to be aggressive in this situation.

To which I pointed out it was more about having the insight of knowing that ST and D are the strengths of this team.

Trying to push the ball into the teeth of an elite defense would take guts. Putting the game back into the hands of your own elite ST and D takes smarts.

Big brain KF.

Yup dance with the girl ya brought. He knows where his bread is buttered and I feel like an ass when I sometimes find myself 2nd guessing him.

 

[Hawkfnntn]

That was my favorite series of plays. Risky but very aggressive game management call. Shows great confidence in the D but on the downside I think it also demonstrates the lack of confidence in our offense to get first downs. Great situational play calling though, worked out better than I could have imagined and was a key difference maker in the game!

Yes our O isn't great but I don't think his decision to do it was made so much because of that. He just knew that was a way to secure 15 (ended up being 20) more yards in field position by doing it by just accepting the penalty. It was easier to just do that as opposed to yeah having our offense try to do that too.

Remember PSUs punter had himself a day too he'd been kicking great too. I think that had something to do with it as well. We were fortunate that that was his shortest kick of the day.

I'm not sure if in the moment how much of all this thought ran through his head but I do think the gist of it was he wanted us to get the ball back as close to midfield as possible and that's what happened. With 6 plus mins to go and all our TOs he wasn't worried about the clock yet.

 

[Ben Rumson]

Yup dance with the girl ya brought. He knows where his bread is buttered and I feel like an ass when I sometimes find myself 2nd guessing him.

Don't worry. I'm sure he's read lots of our posts and laughed at what dumbasses we are sometimes! Hey Mary look what these jokers said ! It's ok Kirk just don't rub their nose in it to bad and call back to back to back timeouts!

 

[NorthKCHawk]

It was risky. I don't think there was much risk that the kid made a 30 yard play given all the factors. But, All its takes is a defensive holding, PI, or some sort of personal foul to get an automatic first down. What if our DL got called for a questionable late hit on the kid? I would have declined, but that is why he makes 4 mill a year.

 

[haydensly]

After Iowa took the lead penn st got a first down then turned the ball over on downs with about 3:40 left. Penn st had 3 time outs. Goodson good gain of 6, then a short gain and a timeout, then the LAME ASS play call I thought on 3rd and 3 for the hawks.

You remember it, Petras was called on to rollout and if the receiver was open throw it, which he wasnt, so petras just went down. Now with just over 2 mintues to go and first down is just about killing the clock time.

Why not on third and 3 give it to Goodson and maybe risk the fumble or even better run petras on a surprise QB sneak. Who knows as we get some great yardage on those sneaks.

And then the Dee held again after the punt and as others mentioned Hankins should have just batted the ball down to give us the ball at about the 8 yard line. Now penn st used their last timeout after 1st down so Kirk just decided to be ultra conservative taking a knee twice knowing it was high odds that that they couldnt score.

But again I am with you and I might have tried 3 QB sneaks during this possession to gain yardage and put some pressure on the Penn St Dee.

I had a different take on the third and three call. If you noticed the D-Line, there was NO WAY Goodson was going to pick up a first down into the teeth of that defense. I think they had Petras roll out to try to surprise the defense. If he had an open lane, run for the first. If not, go down and protect the ball. He had absolutely no intention of throwing that ball and a) risking an interception and b) stopping the clock with an incompletion.

 

[uihawk82]

I had a different take on the third and three call. If you noticed the D-Line, there was NO WAY Goodson was going to pick up a first down into the teeth of that defense. I think they had Petras roll out to try to surprise the defense. If he had an open lane, run for the first. If not, go down and protect the ball. He had absolutely no intention of throwing that ball and a) risking an interception and b) stopping the clock with an incompletion.

You are probably correct on it not being a pass because the only receiver over there really looked like they were getting ready to block.

Wildcat with IKM and Tracy on each side of Goodson could have been a nice call there. And speaking of wildcat, right after the early interception by Jacobs the hawks ran wildcat on 1st down I think and Tracy coming across the formation looked like he would have had a chance to score but Goodson kept the ball.

 

[GesterHawk]

After Iowa took the lead penn st got a first down then turned the ball over on downs with about 3:40 left. Penn st had 3 time outs. Goodson good gain of 6, then a short gain and a timeout, then the LAME ASS play call I thought on 3rd and 3 for the hawks.

You remember it, Petras was called on to rollout and if the receiver was open throw it, which he wasnt, so petras just went down. Now with just over 2 mintues to go and first down is just about killing the clock time.

Why not on third and 3 give it to Goodson and maybe risk the fumble or even better run petras on a surprise QB sneak. Who knows as we get some great yardage on those sneaks.

And then the Dee held again after the punt and as others mentioned Hankins should have just batted the ball down to give us the ball at about the 8 yard line. Now penn st used their last timeout after 1st down so Kirk just decided to be ultra conservative taking a knee twice knowing it was high odds that that they couldnt score.

But again I am with you and I might have tried 3 QB sneaks during this possession to gain yardage and put some pressure on the Penn St Dee.

I don't think that had Hawkins just dropped it that Iowa would go for the FG. It would have been 7 or nothing. 3 only puts us up by 6 and results in us having to kick off to them.
Their offense had a much lower chance of scoring on us than them making an awesome special teams play and giving them a short field or worse.

Granted, the biggest risk was a bad snap on our punt. It was not their offense.

 

[GesterHawk]

You are probably correct on it not being a pass because the only receiver over there really looked like they were getting ready to block.

Wildcat with IKM and Tracy on each side of Goodson could have been a nice call there. And speaking of wildcat, right after the early interception by Jacobs the hawks ran wildcat on 1st down I think and Tracy coming across the formation looked like he would have had a chance to score but Goodson kept the ball.

Having a non-QB hand that ball off increases the risk of turnover. Maybe not by too much, but it does.

 

[Seth53]

KF's sorta did this before with/to PSU.

Remember the 2004 6-4 game @ PSU?

He had the punter run around in the endzone (in the 4th quarter) and ended up taking an intentional safety knowing PSU couldn't move against the Iowa defense that day.

 

[Northside Hawk]

Name me another coach or team that when trailing in the 4th q would accept a penalty when if he declined it that woulda made it 4th down?
Not very flipping many I bet. I thought it at the time there's some risk with that. Because any defensive penalty besides an off sides woulda gave them an automatic 1st down. That to me was the risk not them converting a 3rd and 20 plus or whatever it ended up being.

But he had the utmost faith in that D to not only not do that but our fans backed em up 5 more yards with a false start after that so they punted from their end zone. Which then lead directly to the Petras to Nico play right after it. That is some next level coaching in the moment that probably gained us 20-30 yards in field position and we all know how valuable even 10 yards can be with how we play. There's an argument to be made that that decision was everything to us winning.

Kirk did the same thing at Rutgers in 2017 in a less dramatic situation. He accepted a holding penalty on third down when declining it would have left Rutgers on the edge of field goal range. Kirk pushed them back ten and then got a sack the next play if I recall, and it eliminated any chance at a field goal attempt.

 

[uihawk82]

I don't think that had Hawkins just dropped it that Iowa would go for the FG. It would have been 7 or nothing. 3 only puts us up by 6 and results in us having to kick off to them.
Their offense had a much lower chance of scoring on us than them making an awesome special teams play and giving them a short field or worse.

Granted, the biggest risk was a bad snap on our punt. It was not their offense.

Correct. If hankins doesnt make that Int the hawks are much deeper in psu territory and can go hard for a TD and correct dont kick a fg but if the hawks fail on 4th down leave psu 50-60 yards to a tying FG