The Invisible Problem With Iowa's Offense

[uihawk82]

I think Iowa uses several players to signal in plays to Stanley/qb and only one signaler is the real one. But this takes a little time. Sometimes a player might bring in a play.

It also takes them a few seconds for the QB at the LOS to identify potential blitzers and relay that to the center who is calling out blocking assignments. Linderbaum might be learning on the job in that respect.

BF needs to get the play in quicker but the team can still run the play clock down somewhat to maybe 5 seconds.

Teams run guys in motion to detect what type of pass coverage is being used against them and some times the hawks dont even have time to do that. Need more time for this and other recognition factors.

 

[SteveGarvey1]

To whom is this problem invisible? People have been complaining about this bince I joined the former Hawkeye Nation board on the Scout network in 2005.

I remember Stanzi doing the same thing, which consternated me greatly back then.

 

[hawkeyes87]

otoh, getting to the line late does give the defense less time to point out where the play's going, and adjust accordingly...

Or is that just a weird nightmare I have?

 

[chucktownhawk]

The David Copperfield Effect

 

[kicker22]

Iowa is one of the few if not the last teams that still has a player on the sideline waiting for a play from the OC, runs it in, tells the QB, the offense gets to the line. Waste of approx. 10-15-20 seconds. Most teams today have the large posters of obtuse pictures, sayings, etc. and some sort of code and check with me offense. Not Kirkball.

Please instruct your players to quit chest bumping after a 5 yd gain, spinning the ball and just get up, give the ref the ball, get your ass to the huddle or better yet, to the line of scrimmage ready to run another play.
Now get off my lawn.

As a fanbase we could have so much fun with these posters... I could pictures of GB, KF, and BF and countless other possibilities. To be fair I don't know that we'd require that many.

 

[4thngoal]

The longer Iowa takes in the huddle, the better the chance for a delay of game call.

And the better chance Iowa has to steal a 3-0 win.

It isn't that complicated.

Listen, ball/clock control does keep the score close. How many close games have we won in the last 10 years?
How many have we lost?
Remember KF is even keel, never to high, never to low. Lot's of close games. Very few blowouts in either direction.
It's the losing part nobody likes.
Ok so as I have said a hundred times before. You have to score when playing ball control because limited possessions make points a premium. #2 you have to win the turn over battle. Turnovers are never easy to overcome, but the longer the drives take the more exacerbated turnovers become. #3 you have to stop them from scoring (a good defense).
Now the real question is OSU a couple of years ago. We went totally off schedule. I bet we weren't bleeding the clock as bad as 99% of any other game in a very long time. We were scoring fast (way fast by our standards). We poured on the gas and lit that bitch.
Same could be said for pretty much all of 2015. Except maybe the Wisconsin game (very low close score).
Now when you play ball/clock control, everyone will try and take away the run and short passes. Why? Because that's how you control the ball/clock.
Where does this all leave us?
We have to be able to hurry up and we have to be able to slow down.
Look man, try peddling your bike across town in only first gear. On the way home try it only in 10th gear or whatever your highest speed of your bicycle.
The trick is to understand that everything works like that in life. Sometimes you are peddling up hill, somedays nothing is going right. You need to be able to downshift and power through. Other days everything will come easy, you are on the downhill, so jam it in 10th and go man go.
Just don't get stuck in one gear, because life and football require the use of all gears and at the right time.

I fix things. It's what I do.

 

[Fryowa]

Iowa is one of the few if not the last teams that still has a player on the sideline waiting for a play from the OC, runs it in, tells the QB, the offense gets to the line. Waste of approx. 10-15-20 seconds. Most teams today have the large posters of obtuse pictures, sayings, etc. and some sort of code and check with me offense. Not Kirkball.

Please instruct your players to quit chest bumping after a 5 yd gain, spinning the ball and just get up, give the ref the ball, get your ass to the huddle or better yet, to the line of scrimmage ready to run another play.
Now get off my lawn.

The B1G needs to just bite the bullet and put radios in QB helmets like the NFL.

 

[dirtwrap]

You have to understand football strategy in order to have an educated critical opinion on why Iowa does what it does.

The purpose of lining back up after a play and going no huddle (at times other than when there is no time at the end of the half or game) is to freeze the defense and not allow substitutions with the goal of exploiting a matchup. Now saying that, the offense is also stuck with its personnel group as well. Then the offense comes to the line, calls the plays at the line of scrimmage, most of the time out of the same formation, and goes after that matchup problem.

The good in that is that if the offense has a matchup advantage, more often than that they can win that down. The bad is that if the offense doesn't have a matchup advantage, they are kind of a one trick pony with nowhere to go with the ball.

So these teams that do this, like Washington State off the top of my head, can score a lot of points and win 10 games if they have a matchup advantage. If they don't, they win 3 games and get blown out by 50. And no matter what they do, they cant scheme their way against the elite teams.

The moral here is football always has and always will be a game about matchups and how you can exploit that. And that doesn't matter if you are playing uptempo, playing ball control possession offense, pass happy, run heavy, RPO, wishbone, air raid, etc.

With the case of Iowa, we rarely have physical mismatches that we can exploit. Last year was a rarity with the tight ends, because they were both too fast for linebackers and too big for safeties and corners. However, the great teams had the athletic linebackers that could play in space and limited their production. But aside from that, our philosophy knowing we don't have physical mismatches is to set up and create formation and personnel mismatches. We change formations and personnel a lot, almost every play. The defense has to react to those changes either with their formation or personnel changes as well. Couple that with our versatility in personnel (like every back we have can both run and catch) and formation (we can equally throw or run out of every formation we have), we try to exploit tendencies of the defense by disgusing when we play those cards up out sleeve. That is the main reason for play action, and why play action has and is the most effective play calling weapon an OC has.

Currently, we are losing the mismatch battle against top teams, plain and simple. Our guards are overmatched by athletic and strong defensive lineman, our backs either aren't fast or aren't powerful or don't have vision, our quarterback cant run and our tight ends are overmatched by linebackers. When you add all that up, it doesn't matter what offense you play, you can only scheme your way for so long.

Go back and watch all our games, play by play and you will see. You can pick the same plays that we run against MTSU and Michigan, or Rutgers and PSU. You will see plays against the lesser teams go for touchdowns but go for minimal or no gain or even a loss against an elite team because a player makes a play. Maybe a defensive player beats a block, or simply out runs the play, or whatever. So that tells you it's not the x's and o's it's the Jimmy's and joes.

 

[DBAHawkFan]

We had match-up advantages last year with our two TE, yet many games where we kept one of them off the field for long stretches. So clearly our staff wasn't interested in exploiting the defenses.

I thought Iowa adjusted from UM to PSU in regards to the play clock. Stanley was able to get to the line with the clock still in the teens, and that may be a reason why we only gave up a couple of sacks instead of 50.

 

[4thngoal]

You have to understand football strategy in order to have an educated critical opinion on why Iowa does what it does.

The purpose of lining back up after a play and going no huddle (at times other than when there is no time at the end of the half or game) is to freeze the defense and not allow substitutions with the goal of exploiting a matchup. Now saying that, the offense is also stuck with its personnel group as well. Then the offense comes to the line, calls the plays at the line of scrimmage, most of the time out of the same formation, and goes after that matchup problem.

The good in that is that if the offense has a matchup advantage, more often than that they can win that down. The bad is that if the offense doesn't have a matchup advantage, they are kind of a one trick pony with nowhere to go with the ball.

So these teams that do this, like Washington State off the top of my head, can score a lot of points and win 10 games if they have a matchup advantage. If they don't, they win 3 games and get blown out by 50. And no matter what they do, they cant scheme their way against the elite teams.

The moral here is football always has and always will be a game about matchups and how you can exploit that. And that doesn't matter if you are playing uptempo, playing ball control possession offense, pass happy, run heavy, RPO, wishbone, air raid, etc.

With the case of Iowa, we rarely have physical mismatches that we can exploit. Last year was a rarity with the tight ends, because they were both too fast for linebackers and too big for safeties and corners. However, the great teams had the athletic linebackers that could play in space and limited their production. But aside from that, our philosophy knowing we don't have physical mismatches is to set up and create formation and personnel mismatches. We change formations and personnel a lot, almost every play. The defense has to react to those changes either with their formation or personnel changes as well. Couple that with our versatility in personnel (like every back we have can both run and catch) and formation (we can equally throw or run out of every formation we have), we try to exploit tendencies of the defense by disgusing when we play those cards up out sleeve. That is the main reason for play action, and why play action has and is the most effective play calling weapon an OC has.

Currently, we are losing the mismatch battle against top teams, plain and simple. Our guards are overmatched by athletic and strong defensive lineman, our backs either aren't fast or aren't powerful or don't have vision, our quarterback cant run and our tight ends are overmatched by linebackers. When you add all that up, it doesn't matter what offense you play, you can only scheme your way for so long.

Go back and watch all our games, play by play and you will see. You can pick the same plays that we run against MTSU and Michigan, or Rutgers and PSU. You will see plays against the lesser teams go for touchdowns but go for minimal or no gain or even a loss against an elite team because a player makes a play. Maybe a defensive player beats a block, or simply out runs the play, or whatever. So that tells you it's not the x's and o's it's the Jimmy's and joes.

Good post. All very true.
However ISU rarely has the talent we do across the board. They are getting closer.
Did NDSU have our talent across the board?
No, they beat us at our own game. They said fine, you want to control the ball, limit possessions? All we have to do is keep it close (which is the inherit design of that style). All we have to do is score a TD or two and at the end of the game we will still be within striking distance. Works the exact same when we play a team much better than us. We are almost always within striking distance at the end of the game.
So for the last time.
Scoring TD's is at a premium if you play or are playing someone who plays this style of ball. Points carry a extremely high value in this type of game. It's the result of playing this type of game.
It's not wrong. But as we know it can bite you.

 

[revkev73]

Listen, ball/clock control does keep the score close. How many close games have we won in the last 10 years?
How many have we lost?
Remember KF is even keel, never to high, never to low. Lot's of close games. Very few blowouts in either direction.
It's the losing part nobody likes.
Ok so as I have said a hundred times before. You have to score when playing ball control because limited possessions make points a premium. #2 you have to win the turn over battle. Turnovers are never easy to overcome, but the longer the drives take the more exacerbated turnovers become. #3 you have to stop them from scoring (a good defense).
Now the real question is OSU a couple of years ago. We went totally off schedule. I bet we weren't bleeding the clock as bad as 99% of any other game in a very long time. We were scoring fast (way fast by our standards). We poured on the gas and lit that bitch.
Same could be said for pretty much all of 2015. Except maybe the Wisconsin game (very low close score).
Now when you play ball/clock control, everyone will try and take away the run and short passes. Why? Because that's how you control the ball/clock.
Where does this all leave us?
We have to be able to hurry up and we have to be able to slow down.
Look man, try peddling your bike across town in only first gear. On the way home try it only in 10th gear or whatever your highest speed of your bicycle.
The trick is to understand that everything works like that in life. Sometimes you are peddling up hill, somedays nothing is going right. You need to be able to downshift and power through. Other days everything will come easy, you are on the downhill, so jam it in 10th and go man go.
Just don't get stuck in one gear, because life and football require the use of all gears and at the right time.

I fix things. It's what I do.

Fix the OC...

 

[revkev73]

otoh, getting to the line late does give the defense less time to point out where the play's going, and adjust accordingly...

Or is that just a weird nightmare I have?

Re-watch games, you aren't hallucinating.

 

[hawkeyes87]

You will see plays against the lesser teams go for touchdowns but go for minimal or no gain or even a loss against an elite team because a player makes a play. Maybe a defensive player beats a block, or simply out runs the play, or whatever. So that tells you it's not the x's and o's it's the Jimmy's and joes.

Actually, all that tells you is the play worked in one case, didn't work in the other. Were the defenses in the same alignment? Did they do the same thing at the snap (maybe a stunt was a key to the stop)?. Did the offense make a mistake in the unsuccessful play they didn't make in the successful play?

Even if these things were all the same in both the successful & unsuccessful play, so yes the Jimmy's and Joes won that play, was it a good play call? Did it have a reasonable chance to succeed against the defense, in the alignment they were in? If not, that's still an x's and o's issue. Maybe a "qb needs more / better audibles" issue.

 

[Knight78]

When my brother-in-law played for Iowa Central CC, the wife and I went to a number of his games. The Tritons would be in the huddle until about 5 seconds left on the play clock (on purpose), then would sprint to the line, get set and they would typically go on first sound from the QB. No audibles, no coverage questions, etc. By not taking time during lining up, the defense was always guessing the formation and the play. Waiting so long to break the huddle can work, but it takes a certain offensive scheme for it to work.

 

[Knight78]

Centers calling plays don’t understand this

Centers DO understand this. Centers typically call the line blocking scheme (which could explain our line weakness as our center is a freshman). It explains why when we have an experienced center we typically have a line that blocks well.

If you don't know the center calls blocking schemes, you really don't know football.

 

[Knight78]

The B1G needs to just bite the bullet and put radios in QB helmets like the NFL.

That won't remedy the fact that Iowa runs different player packages in for different plays. We don't just keep 11 (or even 10) out there and just run play after play. We are constantly changing offensive packages which leads to different looks to give the defense.

 

[Fryowa]

That won't remedy the fact that Iowa runs different player packages in for different plays. We don't just keep 11 (or even 10) out there and just run play after play. We are constantly changing offensive packages which leads to different looks to give the defense.

There are a lot of benefits to radios other than speeding up play.

Especially at the college level, there's plenty of coaching that can be done while playing.

 

[4thngoal]

Fix the OC...

No the problem is they understand what they want to do, they just don't understand the entirety of what that brings.
I mean, if you don't have a defense. You don't really want to invest in one. You don't want to recruit for one, you don't want to pay to develop one. You can still win. But you have to understand what goes with that.
In ball/clock control philosophy, the design of it will result in closer games, both playing above and below your talent level. Points and turnovers naturally become more valuable. You have to be good at it because if you are not some teams will score on you in two minutes. That puts pressure on your own offense to sustain long drives that end in scores.
Like I said, it requires being able to adapt. Switching gears when necessary and knowing when to do it.
Boxers are a good example. You have to be able to throw lots of different punches. You have to go fast and go slow.
If a boxer had one speed and one punch, he wouldn't make it very far, would he.

 

[AHawk1]

When my brother-in-law played for Iowa Central CC, the wife and I went to a number of his games. The Tritons would be in the huddle until about 5 seconds left on the play clock (on purpose), then would sprint to the line, get set and they would typically go on first sound from the QB. No audibles, no coverage questions, etc. By not taking time during lining up, the defense was always guessing the formation and the play. Waiting so long to break the huddle can work, but it takes a certain offensive scheme for it to work.

Was that the Paul Shupe ready go days?

 

[Knight78]

Was that the Paul Shupe ready go days?

Yup. One of the assistants ended up being the principal here at Muscatine HS, Dennis Heiman. My brother-in-law's soph season the Tritons won the Like Cola Bowl held in the UNI Dome.