AreWeThereYet
Well-Known Member
I agree with spudhawk & herbyhawk that there is some room for guarded optimism. I don’t expect a great year but barring key injuries the Hawkeye’s should at least have a winning season. Defensive line is the most obvious problem area. It will be a work in progress the entire year.
I really don’t expect the offense to plod along with an often pedestrian ball control game, like it often has in the recent past. I think Davis was brought in to open things up a bit and Vandenberg has some tools to work with. I think the key to the new offense will be how well Vandenberg moves with the ball before he gets rid of it. He was very tentative this year in the pocket, but Iowa relies too much on very clean pass blocking. At this point I don’t know if how much of Vandenbergs shortcomings moving in the pocket are him and how much of it is coaching & scheme. I think they will try to get Vandenberg to move around a bit more behind the line of scrimmage and create some plays more than Iowa is used to seeing. Vandenberg isn’t a running quarterback but he does have decent mobility.
Davis gets faulted for his horizontal game, running and passing outside the tackles, spreading things out. Iowa can use a bit of that. At this point they may be one of the least horizontal teams in college football. I think Ferentz & KOK had predictable tendencies that became a comfort zone, and increasingly limited the offense. Davis’s comfort zone and his horizontal game have little in common with Iowa’s game up to this point. It will be interesting to see what the hybrid they talk about will look like.
I really don’t expect the offense to plod along with an often pedestrian ball control game, like it often has in the recent past. I think Davis was brought in to open things up a bit and Vandenberg has some tools to work with. I think the key to the new offense will be how well Vandenberg moves with the ball before he gets rid of it. He was very tentative this year in the pocket, but Iowa relies too much on very clean pass blocking. At this point I don’t know if how much of Vandenbergs shortcomings moving in the pocket are him and how much of it is coaching & scheme. I think they will try to get Vandenberg to move around a bit more behind the line of scrimmage and create some plays more than Iowa is used to seeing. Vandenberg isn’t a running quarterback but he does have decent mobility.
Davis gets faulted for his horizontal game, running and passing outside the tackles, spreading things out. Iowa can use a bit of that. At this point they may be one of the least horizontal teams in college football. I think Ferentz & KOK had predictable tendencies that became a comfort zone, and increasingly limited the offense. Davis’s comfort zone and his horizontal game have little in common with Iowa’s game up to this point. It will be interesting to see what the hybrid they talk about will look like.
