Our Current Problems Are Not Complicated

T

TerminatorHawk

Member
Last week we put out a new depth chart heading into 2015. If you want to know why we are struggling right now go through the following exercise. Take a look at the listed starters and do some quick research as to what those players were rated coming out of high school and more importantly who Rivals lists as their other confirmed offers. The results are staggering. There is no amount of scheming, coaching, play calling ,desire, execution and strength training that can make up that gap. To paraphrase a recently stated opinion in a wildly popular article on this site... The old saying that "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard" is all fine and dandy until talent also works hard. When that happens, less talent gets his teeth kicked in.
 
Now do the same exercise with all of our opponents. The current players are the reason we have no chance against OSU. Everything else is why we lose to ISU.
 
TerminatorHawk said:
Last week we put out a new depth chart heading into 2015. If you want to know why we are struggling right now go through the following exercise. Take a look at the listed starters and do some quick research as to what those players were rated coming out of high school and more importantly who Rivals lists as their other confirmed offers. The results are staggering. There is no amount of scheming, coaching, play calling ,desire, execution and strength training that can make up that gap. To paraphrase a recently stated opinion in a wildly popular article on this site... The old saying that "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard" is all fine and dandy until talent also works hard. When that happens, less talent gets his teeth kicked in.
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Don't pizz on me and tell me it's raining!!
 
That's why they need guys like Scheel, Higdon, Wisnieski, Matt Nelson, Outsey, Taylor Etc to step up bc those guys have talent they are just young.
 
No offense but I also don't buy the "young" argument. I have watched more football the last month than I care to admit and the amount of "young" players that are contributing heavily in these games is high. Unlike many years ago, players entering college these days have typically played hundreds and hundreds of football games, been to elite level camps, been through decent strength and conditioning programs, received personal training, etc. I really hope the guys you list step up and can compete.. time will tell. But right now, the evidence doesn't exist to support the thought that we are playing with players that other successful schools wanted to attend their University. We will START in the neighborhood of 8 players next year that didn't have one Division 1 offer from a successful program other than us. That's an incredible stat. I have ZERO doubt our players work hard, I have zero doubt our coaches coach hard, and have zero doubt they all are dedicated to winning, etc. The reason we lose to ISU and have to struggle to beat Ball State and UNI is that we are largely playing with the same guys... for the most part. We either have determined we can't recruit the big time athlete to Iowa City or we don't have the right people in place to do the recruiting.. including the head coach.
 
How many colleges do you think would go after kirk if Iowa let him go? If a college picked him up what do you think he would be paid?

The coaching is much worse than the recruiting. However the combination is going to bury Iowa football for awhile.
 
TerminatorHawk said:
No offense but I also don't buy the "young" argument. I have watched more football the last month than I care to admit and the amount of "young" players that are contributing heavily in these games is high. Unlike many years ago, players entering college these days have typically played hundreds and hundreds of football games, been to elite level camps, been through decent strength and conditioning programs, received personal training, etc. I really hope the guys you list step up and can compete.. time will tell. But right now, the evidence doesn't exist to support the thought that we are playing with players that other successful schools wanted to attend their University. We will START in the neighborhood of 8 players next year that didn't have one Division 1 offer from a successful program other than us. That's an incredible stat. I have ZERO doubt our players work hard, I have zero doubt our coaches coach hard, and have zero doubt they all are dedicated to winning, etc. The reason we lose to ISU and have to struggle to beat Ball State and UNI is that we are largely playing with the same guys... for the most part. We either have determined we can't recruit the big time athlete to Iowa City or we don't have the right people in place to do the recruiting.. including the head coach.
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Let's talk about "young" for a moment. Ohio State is a young team. I'm done talking now.
 
I don't buy the coaching thing either really.. Sorry. Honestly, how successful are you going to be against Big Ten teams handing the ball to Weisman, or throwing to Vendenburg, or rushing a passer with our D ends or trying to shed blocks and chase down running backs with the 3 linebackers we have listed as starters next year? You could put Urban Meyer or Vince Lombardi on our sideline at this point and they are going to struggle mightily. It's not an attack on our players.. or it shouldn't be. I hope they wouldn't take it that way.. I actually think Weisman understood this completely. He works his butt off and is a great guy by all accounts.. But he was probably the most physically challenged tail back of any team in any bowl I saw.. and I watched a lot of them!
 
It is logical to think that if your recruiting FCS/MAC level talent that that's what your going to get as a result of it... I think Doyle was ahead of his time in training kids.... ten to fifteen years ago. Everyone has caught up and that is no longer an advantage to us at all. Now you gotta have talent and kids that fit whatever style you want to play. Be it the spread pro style or even the option like GT does. The systems will work if the talent fits and coaching is good.
 
We had problems beating terrible teams during the years where we had a roster of NFL players. Knowing that, how can you say it's not coaching?
 
I just think it all goes together now. You can't have just one piece and expect to over compensate for something else. Be it lack of talent or whatever. You have to have kids that fit the skill set of the style of play you want and they have to be talented enough to do it. With coaches that know what they are doing. Be it how to develop them as players and play calling. Square pegs into round holes like Weisman was just don't work. Or slow footed safetys like Lowdermilk that couldn't out run anybody take a good angle or tackle when he did get there.
 
TerminatorHawk said:
No offense but I also don't buy the "young" argument.
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me either, OSU just won the national title with a bunch of "young" players. 4 and 5 star kids don't wanna play in ferentz's boring system and be suck behind a 1 star guy who wouldn't be on the two deep on a MAC team because he's a junior.
 
PC: We also did finish in the Top 10 multiple times in those years and even though we did lose to teams ( at times) that had less talent than us.. we were at least ranked in the Top 25 at various times during those years. Currently we haven't been ranked since November 2010.. In my opinion, this is almost completely due to the fact that our team hasn't been talented. This years team probably has a couple of NFL players on it.. but we were still a really poor team.. highly untalented. I concede that both of these things are important, I just feel like if you don't start out at least somewhat close on the talent front, no amount of coaching can get you to close the gap.
 
PCHawk said:
Now do the same exercise with all of our opponents. The current players are the reason we have no chance against OSU. Everything else is why we lose to ISU.
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Iowas problems are more than 1 thing.

Part of it is talent, but allot of it is scheme, play calling and personnel decisions. All problem have the same root.

Even with this roster there was no excuse to lose to ISU, Maryland, or Nebraska. And there was no excuse to get blown out by Minnesota or UT.
 
TerminatorHawk said:
I don't buy the coaching thing either really.. Sorry. Honestly, how successful are you going to be against Big Ten teams handing the ball to Weisman, or throwing to Vendenburg, or rushing a passer with our D ends or trying to shed blocks and chase down running backs with the 3 linebackers we have listed as starters next year? You could put Urban Meyer or Vince Lombardi on our sideline at this point and they are going to struggle mightily. It's not an attack on our players.. or it shouldn't be. I hope they wouldn't take it that way.. I actually think Weisman understood this completely. He works his butt off and is a great guy by all accounts.. But he was probably the most physically challenged tail back of any team in any bowl I saw.. and I watched a lot of them!
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Myer easily gets this same team to the conference championship.

He would never use Weisman at tail back, he wouldn't have Rudock at QB , he wouldn't have KMM Hillyard and Vandenburg as the featured receivers he would run a much more effective yet simpler offense with CJ , DW, Canzeri, Duzey, Powell Wadley ect and he sure as hell wouldn't have Greg Davis as the offensive coordinator.

You can say Iowa has poor talent, which is true, but when the coach chooses to keep the talent he does have on the bench, it's an even bigger problem.
 
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