We Get Outcoached on a Weekly Basis

W

WindyCityHawkI

Well-Known Member
1. Can someone send our Kirk and the staff to a clock management school? It is mind boggling how they continually screw up over and over again. Minnesota hadnt done anything to stop us in the first half, and with 1:20 to go and 2 timeouts, we run the clock out. Every Hawk fan in America knew that was happening. Please explain why we were content with a 7-7 draw at halftime WITH A TEAM THAT HAD BEEN OUTSCORED IN THE FIRST HALF 103-3 AGAINST THE OTHER 3 BIG TEN TEAMS THEY HAVE PLAYED. We have the best WR in the Big 10 and in school history and we make zero attempt to push the ball down the field to him. Every good team in America would be trying to score in this situation, especially against MN.
2. Do the Iowa coaches even watch film to try to figure out a gameplan on D? Michigan State has completely shutdown Michigan the past two years, and I bet we won't even watch those games to make an adjustment. What's the point when we are going to run a base defense, never blitz, let LB's cover WR's all day, and with the corners 7 yards off the WR's. Beating our defense is not difficult unless we have 2 or 3 all americans on our d line. Our defensive philosophy may have worked when all Big 10 teams ran the ball out of the I the whole game, but guess what? That is a thing of the past. We are about 5 yrs late on the party to see that everyone runs the spread now. We need Mike Stoops. Norm is doing what Hayden did his last 2 or 3 years, hanging on too long and costing the program.
3. Motivation and playing with a little emotion. You may not have seen this on TV, but I was at the game and it was unreal to see how jacked Minnesota's players and coaches were the entire game. Anytime they did anything, everyone was going nuts on their sidelines. I understand MN is awful and may get excited easily, but as usual, our players and sideline are completely dead. The only guys i see jumping around and being pumped on our sideline are Nico Law and a few other freshman. I am sure Kirk will make sure he tells them to stop doing that and start acting lifeless like everyone else on the sideline. This is part of the reason we lose to so many inferior teams, we sleepwalk through games and let them stay in it on the road, which is recipe for disaster.
 
The Iowa staff really struggles with clock management. No doubt.

They should have called a timeout after MN's 3rd down on the last drive of the first half. They would have had 43 more seconds to work with, but instead they let MN run the play clock down and Iowa was left with not enough time to work with on the ensuing kickoff.

Really frustrating to see that sort of stuff.
 
storminspank said:
The Iowa staff really struggles with clock management. No doubt.

They should have called a timeout after MN's 3rd down on the last drive of the first half. They would have had 43 more seconds to work with, but instead they let MN run the play clock down and Iowa was left with not enough time to work with on the ensuing kickoff.

Really frustrating to see that sort of stuff.
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I thought they should have called a timeout late in the game, just before Gray ran it in to go ahead. We let 2 minutes waste away before a score that was all but imminent.
 
On the flip side, they should take notes from Jerry Kill and most other D1 coaching staffs that know how to manage a clock. Iowa would never have thought to let the clock run at the end of the half on offense, they would have run up and snapped it saving the other team from using a timeout. Minnesota probably knew they could get away with it because Iowa would never use a timeout in that situation. Then on Minnesota's final scoring drive, Kill bleeds the clock again and uses absolutely as much time as possible leaving Iowa with just 2:48 to use. You just never see Iowa in a game manage the clock and use it to their favor.
 
tm3308 said:
I thought they should have called a timeout late in the game, just before Gray ran it in to go ahead. We let 2 minutes waste away before a score that was all but imminent.
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I thought the very same thing here too. Keeping them out of the endzone was going to be nearly impossible. I thought we should have used a TO to save some clock. Not that it mattered anyway with our playcalling once we got the ball back.
 
I understand there are some things we just have to put up with when it comes to Ferentz - conservative calls, coach speak, etc... However he talks about making adjustments and learning from mistakes, but clock management is one area that is just awful. Kirk Ferentz makes Denny Green look like a clock management genius.
 
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWmQbk5h86w]Dennis Green "They are what we thought they were, and we let them off the hook!" - YouTube[/ame]


We let them off the hook. We have done this in many of our losses. If we play smart and stick to what is working, aka Coker up the middle. Then we win many more games.
 
I've got no problem with killing the clock to end the 1st half. Minny had just driven the length of the field to tie it up. If we go three and out there we stick our D back out on the field when they were gassed and give Minny the chance to take the lead at half. In addition they were getting the ball first in the second half so if things go poorly we could have been down two scores before we saw the ball again in the second half.

I also think we needed a TO when Minny had the ball. The trick there is we had the lead at the time. It's always a double edged sword, do you really want to save time on the clock when you are ahead? I don't think it was a given Minny was going to score, I mean they did need 4 downs to score. In hindsight it obviously makes sense but it's a much tougher call in the moment. The deciding factor for me would have been our ability to run the football at will. If we end up with an extra 45 seconds to kill at the end of the game because we used a time out when they had the ball I had the confidence we could do it.
 
"if we go 3 and out." That is the same loser mentality our coaches take for everything. All they can see is the negative of what could happen. How about they consider we are playing the worst defense possibly in America and we are afraid of what happens if they stop us? Every good coach would be trying to score in that situation, or at least taking a shot downfield to McNutt.
 
DuffMan said:
I've got no problem with killing the clock to end the 1st half. Minny had just driven the length of the field to tie it up. If we go three and out there we stick our D back out on the field when they were gassed and give Minny the chance to take the lead at half.
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How many 3 and outs did Iowa have in the first half?
 
WindyCityHawkI said:
"if we go 3 and out." That is the same loser mentality our coaches take for everything. All they can see is the negative of what could happen. How about they consider we are playing the worst defense possibly in America and we are afraid of what happens if they stop us? Every good coach would be trying to score in that situation, or at least taking a shot downfield to McNutt.
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I'm 100% sure they see both the positive and negative outcomes for everything and take a course of action that makes sense. If they only saw negative we would kneel 3 times and punt on every possession. I'm not saying there isn't an argument to try and put points on the board in that situation, I'm saying it's not the only argument. I have no problem at all with the way they ended the half considering the big picture.

Again they had just gone on a long TD scoring drive. They got the ball back to start the second half, and we were deep in our territory. Getting into the locker room tied at 7 seems to be a pretty good option to me.
 
storminspank said:
How many 3 and outs did Iowa have in the first half?
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None, but we ran the ball a ton. In the last 7 pass attempts coming into that possession Iowa had 2 incompletions, 2 sacks, and one 3 yard scramble by JVB. The passing game wasn't really firing on all cylinders at that point in the game.
 
WindyCityHawkI said:
1. Can someone send our Kirk and the staff to a clock management school? It is mind boggling how they continually screw up over and over again. Minnesota hadnt done anything to stop us in the first half, and with 1:20 to go and 2 timeouts, we run the clock out. Every Hawk fan in America knew that was happening. Please explain why we were content with a 7-7 draw at halftime WITH A TEAM THAT HAD BEEN OUTSCORED IN THE FIRST HALF 103-3 AGAINST THE OTHER 3 BIG TEN TEAMS THEY HAVE PLAYED. We have the best WR in the Big 10 and in school history and we make zero attempt to push the ball down the field to him. Every good team in America would be trying to score in this situation, especially against MN.
2. Do the Iowa coaches even watch film to try to figure out a gameplan on D? Michigan State has completely shutdown Michigan the past two years, and I bet we won't even watch those games to make an adjustment. What's the point when we are going to run a base defense, never blitz, let LB's cover WR's all day, and with the corners 7 yards off the WR's. Beating our defense is not difficult unless we have 2 or 3 all americans on our d line. Our defensive philosophy may have worked when all Big 10 teams ran the ball out of the I the whole game, but guess what? That is a thing of the past. We are about 5 yrs late on the party to see that everyone runs the spread now. We need Mike Stoops. Norm is doing what Hayden did his last 2 or 3 years, hanging on too long and costing the program.
3. Motivation and playing with a little emotion. You may not have seen this on TV, but I was at the game and it was unreal to see how jacked Minnesota's players and coaches were the entire game. Anytime they did anything, everyone was going nuts on their sidelines. I understand MN is awful and may get excited easily, but as usual, our players and sideline are completely dead. The only guys i see jumping around and being pumped on our sideline are Nico Law and a few other freshman. I am sure Kirk will make sure he tells them to stop doing that and start acting lifeless like everyone else on the sideline. This is part of the reason we lose to so many inferior teams, we sleepwalk through games and let them stay in it on the road, which is recipe for disaster.[/QUOTE]

I saw this too. But there is another way to look at it. I saw it as a very professional, organized sideline, complete void of chaos. Quite honestly I like that.

However where the problem lies is that a good team will take advatage of a over-hyped, emotionally charged team by misdirection plays, fakes, disguised coverages and blitzes, etc. Basically set them up by getting them to jump at the first thing the see and hit them with something else. Use their emotion against them. Unfortunately Iowa doesn't do that type of stuff outside of the same play-action passes they've been doing for 12 years that teams can spot before the snap.

As for the title of your post. That's hard to argue with. I am a Ferentz supporter by he and his staff are getting outcoached by staffs from low tier programs regularly.

The clock management stuff. That ship has sailed. I stopped getting mad about that after Michigan '05 when Kirk sat on it after getting deep in Michigan territory at the end of regulation. This staff doesn't know how to manage late game & 1st half situations, they never will. I suggest getting over it or you will drive yourself to the brink of insanity.
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KF is calling games this year as if he still has a good defense.

Not sure I understand why he thinks he can run out the clock at the end of the first half when the defense is just god awful and unable to stop anything.

Iowa needs to score every chance it gets. Like the end of the ISU game, Iowa had a chance to score at the end of the 1st against Minny, but sat on the ball and did nothing.

Mind boggling.
 
JVB was really struggling out there. It looked similar to the Penn State game and the majority of the Pitt game. He seems to really struggle reading different blitz packages. He audibled into some questionable calls yesterday as well. Several times I saw him just staring down one receiver the whole time. With Minnesota dedicating at least two guys to McNutt there should have been other guys open on the field. He just wasn't seeing them. Plus he had some throws there were just plain horrible.
 
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