Is BF still the OC? He is!?? Well damn it. Well if Iowa's going to take any kind of leap up and do it consistently it'll have to include a different style of O. I'm not saying air raid or option football but I am saying running the ball from a 2 TE set on 1st down when you're down 3 possessions in the 3rd quarter after running the play clock down under 5 seconds doesn't work. They had no urgency about things. It was as if they thought the score was the other way around the way he was calling plays. I've defended BF lots of times but I got nothing after that game. Absolutely nothing...
Well it's Monday the sun came up
- Thread starter Hawkfnntn
- Start date
Yeah... It's just so frustrating. We've had worse talent do better though haven't we? There's just about no excuse for what's happened the last 2 weeks. Losing is one thing it's having it happen the way it has that's inexcusable.
Fryowa
Administrator
I still say though that you can't out-scheme a really bad OL. There's no solution offensively for not being able to block. Petras doesn't have any time whatsoever to allow receivers to separate, and running the ball is off the table altogether. If you can't set up tendencies with the run, you got nothing.
Yeah that's the lynch pin to it all I agree. 5 and 7 step drops are just off the table. Literally everything has to be quick. 1 read 2 tops is pushing it and ball has to come out. As far as running game goes I'm surprised they hadn't done more of the jet sweep stuff. Even use the damn wildcat some (I'm not a fan of that normally but it does give an extra blocker) but run that with Goodson throwing it once at least to show it.
The whole lining up in the I formation and running it to the short side of the field and hoping we can get 3 yards is such a waste of effort. And they tried doing that while down 3 scores in the 3rd q... Literally try anything else. A flea flicker, Philly special anything at all.
I would love to be able to be a fly on the wall for their coaches meetings. What effort is put into the game plans week to week etc. You can't try to do the same things to Wisconsin you do to say Maryland. It would never work.
Fryowa
Administrator
Which is hilarious because the thing Iowa became most predictable for during Greg Davis' reign of terror is one of the few things that might open defenses up with this bad OL, and we don't run it.
It wouldn't take long for B1G defenses to key on it though...
Being one-dimensional is as good as no-dimensional.
Oh I agree it wouldn't fix anything either it'd just be something to sprinkle in and try more. Besides the double TE zone running plays what do we actually attempt to do more then once a game? That sort of play at least has a snow balls chance of breaking for a chunk play. The ceiling for most of our running plays is like 5 yards if I'm being generous. We've been lucky to get back to the LOS on half of Goodsons touches lately.
Fryowa
Administrator
Part of me wonders how good Pottebaum would be at tailback...
He's from up here and some WL guys I talked to said his senior year he was running 4.7 40s repeatedly, which is the fastest Jerome Bettis ever ran. Pottebaum is a fricking monster when you stand next to him. He makes Brady Ross (who I love, btw) and Drake Kulick look like little boys.
Every time Monte has gotten the ball it's been a dive straight into the teeth of 4 defensive linemen, I just wonder what he could do with his size and feet if he had 3 more yards of space to develop the play.
I also know 110% it'd never happen
ChosenChildren
Well-Known Member
Put Pottebaum and Williams in the backfield and move Goodson to the slot.....
bostonbrian
Member
This is 100% correct. To simply say BF sucks at playcalling and that is the reason we are in the situation we are in is naïve as much as it is ignorant. That said, I personally do not find his playcalling overly imaginative and unfortunately I think he’s having to learn too much on the fly and this job was likely over his head to begin with. That is however, his dad‘s fault, not his.
The real issue for me is and will be the lack of accountability for having such a disaster on the recruiting front that it led to having an o-line so miserable that your offensive statistics are in the bottom 10 teams in all of the nation. That should be inexcusable and someone SHOULD (but won’t) have to answer for it. I understand/accept the limitations with recruiting to Iowa but we should still expect better than this year in and year out given the support, money, and facilities we have compared with teams whose offenses rank from 80-50 statistically.
One man’s opinion anyway…
Fryowa
Administrator
3rd and 5 or greater yardage play calls are the single most important part of a football game. You absolutely have to give guys a chance with your calls. Where I think the play calling this year has fallen short is that Brian counts on a lot of yards after the catch. Most of the time the only receiver with a chance is 2 yds deep because we're scrambling (OL) and if it's 3rd and 8 you can see what happens.
You HAVE to believe in the statistical side of things. Brian has to ask himself, in P5 football, what is the percentage of pass plays on 3rd and long that register 7+ yards after the catch? I'm guessing it's less than 10% but I don't have that number. That's a known passing down and guys are covered up like blankets. If you're counting on your QB to be 55-65% completion rate, compounded by a less than 10% chance of gaining enough yards on the ground after a catch, that makes what you're trying to do almost impossible. He's trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip.
So...if your odds are 50-60% completion rate to start with, you HAVE to get your targets to the line to gain to even give them a fighting chance because those odds fall off a cliff for every yard you're short of the LTG.
David Bell for Purdue is a master of it, and his coaches call plays that set him up for success.
SCHawkeye2
Well-Known Member
This.
We seem to trot out OL issues as an excuse more years than we should. But never seem to do anything about it.
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