3-2-1: The Specialist
What should we make of the specialist comment about Noah Fant?
Tom Kakert • HawkeyeReport.com
@hawkeyereport
THREE THINGS WE LEARNED
KIRK FERENTZ THINKS NOAH FANT IS A SPECIALIST
Kirk Ferentz kind of dropped a little bit of a bomb on Tuesday at his weekly press conference.
It was slipped in there when discussing Noah Fant and his lack of work on Saturday, but it didn’t get by the reporters in the room.
“I would compare him more to a specialist position. But nonetheless, he's an outstanding football player, and we've tried to get him the ball, and we'll continue to try to get him the ball.”
The “him” was star tight end Noah Fant, who was ranked on Wednesday by ESPN NFL Draft expert Mel Kiper as the top tight end in the 2019 Draft. Kiper also ranked Iowa’s T.J. Hockenson as his 5th best TE prospect.
It was the specialist comment that raised eyebrows, as it should. Ferentz is certainly entitled to his opinion and he knows more about football than the rest of us, but specialist? That’s what you call a kicker or a punter. That’s what you call a left handed relief pitcher who is brought in to get out a left handed hitter and then exiting before has to face a hitter from the opposite side of the plate.
What a specialist isn’t is a player who is the top prospect at his position in the country.
Much has been made of Fant’s lack of snaps and targets in the last week, but it’s fair to say some of the perceptions aren’t the reality. For example, Hockenson has 53 targets this year, according to Pro Football Focus, while Fant has 52 in 2018. Now, you could argue that they both need more than just over five per game and you would be right, but some has said Hockenson gets more targets and that’s not factual accurate.
Another comment that had the beat writers wondering was Ferentz saying Fant’s snap count has been pretty consistent the last two years. That led us to the work of the fine folks at Pro Football Focus and we found out that the comment was basically accurate.
Last year, Iowa averaged 66 snaps and Fant was in there for an average of 40 of them. This year, Fant is averaging 39.4 snaps per game, so its fact checked as true. But, it is also fair to point out that Iowa is averaging eight more snaps a game this season.
IOWA HOOPS FIRST TEST
Iowa basketball fans have been wondering if this year will be better than last season.
Thursday night we get our first real chance to see if things have changed for the better when the Hawkeyes square off with a nationally ranked Oregon team in Madison Square Garden.
The first two games probably led to more questions than answers on both ends of the floor. While we saw some positives, I came away still wondering if this Iowa team had turned the corner defensively. It’s been my belief that Iowa doesn’t have to be a great defensive team, but if they could get to average with their offensive weapons, this team could get back to the NCAA Tournament after a two year absence.
Oregon presents a really good challenge. First, they have a really good point guard in Payton Pritchard. Second, they have one of the most unique players in college basketball this year in 7-3 big man Bol Bol. Lastly, they have a roster filled with high end athletic players who can cause problems for any team in college basketball.
If Thursday night goes well and Iowa pulls a surprise, we will have our first evidence of a positive change for the Hawkeye basketball team. If it doesn’t, well, it could be a bad sign that all the work to improve on the defensive end of the floor hasn’t helped.
GOOD DAY FOR FRAN McCAFFERY
Wednesday was a good day for Fran McCaffery and his family. The Iowa head coach was able to watch his second son, Patrick, sign his national letter of intent to play for him next year. Fran McCaffery also received the national letter of intent from point guard Joe Toussaint to complete his recruiting efforts for the Class of 2019, at least for now.
The real story here is what this day means for Patrick McCaffery and the entire McCaffery family. It wasn’t all that long ago that Patrick McCaffery was a teenager battling cancer. In March of 2014 the McCaffery’s received the news that no parent wants to hear, your son has cancer. In the heat of trying to get his team to the NCAA Tournament, a father had to deal with potentially life altering news.
Patrick McCaffery is like his father, a fighter, and he has beaten back cancer and continued to develop as a basketball player. He’s generally considered a Top 50ish prospect in the Class of 2019 and a four star prospect by Rivals.com. He’s still growing and more importantly, he’s starting to fill out a bit from a physical standpoint.
I’ve always loved Patrick McCaffery’s game and he’s one of the most pleasant, positive, and engaging prospects I’ve encountered in my years covering basketball recruiting. It’s going to be fun watching him to continue to grow and develop as a player starting next fall in an Iowa uniform.
And I should add, Toussaint is going to really help Iowa basketball as well. Iowa needs a quick and defensive minded guard on their roster and they now have it. Like I said, it was a good day for Fran McCaffery, the McCaffery family, and Iowa basketball.
Can Toren Young and the Iowa run game get going?
TWO QUESTIONS
IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR IOWA’S RUNNING GAME?
While many fans have been stewing about the snap counts for Noah Fant, the larger and probably more important story of the Hawkeye football season is the running game grinding to a halt in the last three weeks.
Not that it was great this year, but it was decent to average. Then in the last three weeks Iowa has rushed for 135 yards against Penn State, 118 against Purdue, and an anemic 64 yards against Northwestern last week.
When you are an Iowa team built around a balanced attack where the run sets up the play action passing game, averaging 105 yards per game in the three more critical games of the season that decided your fate in the Big Ten West, that’s simply not going to get the job done.
Frankly, the Iowa run game hasn’t been great this year. Ideally, in good seasons, the Hawkeyes would like to be around 170-175 a game on the ground if it’s going well. They have exceeded that number three times this year: Northern Illinois, Northern Iowa, and Maryland.
Which leads to the question, what happened to Iowa’s run game this year?
It starts up front and the offensive line, while doing a good job of protecting Nate Stanley, hasn’t been able to establish dominance in the run game. Once again this year, opponents have loaded up the box with 8 or 9 players (and sometimes more) and it’s next to impossible to win those type of battles on a consistent basis.
The other part of the equation is the running backs. Akrum Wadley could make up for a lot of shortcomings last year with a banged up offensive line. This year, there’s no Wadley. Ivory Kelly-Martin is probably the closest back to Wadley and he’s been battling an ankle injury much of the season which has limited his explosiveness. Toren Young is a straight ahead back and Mekhi Sargent has honestly been a pleasant surprise this year.
This week could set up well for Iowa to get healthy running the ball, but overall, the run game hasn’t been great this year and that’s something they will have address in the off season.
SHOULD WE BE WORRIED ABOUT IOWA’S RUN DEFENSE?
Iowa’s run defense has been really good pretty much all season.
Prior to last week, only Wisconsin, who rushed for 210 yards, really gashed the Hawkeyes and 33 of those yards came on a late game run where Iowa was selling out and got burned.
On the other hand, they have held Iowa State, UNI, Minnesota, and Maryland under 100 yards. And Northern Illinois and Indiana barely cracked the century mark with 101 yards rushing.
Then last week happened. A Northwestern team that came in averaging just 93 yards a game on the ground gashed Iowa for 184 yards.
This week the Hawkeyes face an Illinois team that while not a great squad, can run the football. The Illini are averaging 262 yards per game on the ground, which is second best in the Big Ten. In other words, we are going to find out this weekend if the Hawkeyes run defense is hitting a bit of a wall or if last week was simply a blip on the radar.
Much like the Iowa rushing attack, we are 10 games into the year and it’s unlikely to change a whole lot, so while the Illini are probably going to hit on a few runs, the best guess is Iowa’s rush defense ends up being pretty good in the last two games.
PREDICTION
This will be the week we have all been waiting for…an Iowa running back finally cracks the 100 yard mark on the ground.
What should we make of the specialist comment about Noah Fant?
Tom Kakert • HawkeyeReport.com
@hawkeyereport
THREE THINGS WE LEARNED
KIRK FERENTZ THINKS NOAH FANT IS A SPECIALIST
Kirk Ferentz kind of dropped a little bit of a bomb on Tuesday at his weekly press conference.
It was slipped in there when discussing Noah Fant and his lack of work on Saturday, but it didn’t get by the reporters in the room.
“I would compare him more to a specialist position. But nonetheless, he's an outstanding football player, and we've tried to get him the ball, and we'll continue to try to get him the ball.”
The “him” was star tight end Noah Fant, who was ranked on Wednesday by ESPN NFL Draft expert Mel Kiper as the top tight end in the 2019 Draft. Kiper also ranked Iowa’s T.J. Hockenson as his 5th best TE prospect.
It was the specialist comment that raised eyebrows, as it should. Ferentz is certainly entitled to his opinion and he knows more about football than the rest of us, but specialist? That’s what you call a kicker or a punter. That’s what you call a left handed relief pitcher who is brought in to get out a left handed hitter and then exiting before has to face a hitter from the opposite side of the plate.
What a specialist isn’t is a player who is the top prospect at his position in the country.
Much has been made of Fant’s lack of snaps and targets in the last week, but it’s fair to say some of the perceptions aren’t the reality. For example, Hockenson has 53 targets this year, according to Pro Football Focus, while Fant has 52 in 2018. Now, you could argue that they both need more than just over five per game and you would be right, but some has said Hockenson gets more targets and that’s not factual accurate.
Another comment that had the beat writers wondering was Ferentz saying Fant’s snap count has been pretty consistent the last two years. That led us to the work of the fine folks at Pro Football Focus and we found out that the comment was basically accurate.
Last year, Iowa averaged 66 snaps and Fant was in there for an average of 40 of them. This year, Fant is averaging 39.4 snaps per game, so its fact checked as true. But, it is also fair to point out that Iowa is averaging eight more snaps a game this season.
IOWA HOOPS FIRST TEST
Iowa basketball fans have been wondering if this year will be better than last season.
Thursday night we get our first real chance to see if things have changed for the better when the Hawkeyes square off with a nationally ranked Oregon team in Madison Square Garden.
The first two games probably led to more questions than answers on both ends of the floor. While we saw some positives, I came away still wondering if this Iowa team had turned the corner defensively. It’s been my belief that Iowa doesn’t have to be a great defensive team, but if they could get to average with their offensive weapons, this team could get back to the NCAA Tournament after a two year absence.
Oregon presents a really good challenge. First, they have a really good point guard in Payton Pritchard. Second, they have one of the most unique players in college basketball this year in 7-3 big man Bol Bol. Lastly, they have a roster filled with high end athletic players who can cause problems for any team in college basketball.
If Thursday night goes well and Iowa pulls a surprise, we will have our first evidence of a positive change for the Hawkeye basketball team. If it doesn’t, well, it could be a bad sign that all the work to improve on the defensive end of the floor hasn’t helped.
GOOD DAY FOR FRAN McCAFFERY
Wednesday was a good day for Fran McCaffery and his family. The Iowa head coach was able to watch his second son, Patrick, sign his national letter of intent to play for him next year. Fran McCaffery also received the national letter of intent from point guard Joe Toussaint to complete his recruiting efforts for the Class of 2019, at least for now.
The real story here is what this day means for Patrick McCaffery and the entire McCaffery family. It wasn’t all that long ago that Patrick McCaffery was a teenager battling cancer. In March of 2014 the McCaffery’s received the news that no parent wants to hear, your son has cancer. In the heat of trying to get his team to the NCAA Tournament, a father had to deal with potentially life altering news.
Patrick McCaffery is like his father, a fighter, and he has beaten back cancer and continued to develop as a basketball player. He’s generally considered a Top 50ish prospect in the Class of 2019 and a four star prospect by Rivals.com. He’s still growing and more importantly, he’s starting to fill out a bit from a physical standpoint.
I’ve always loved Patrick McCaffery’s game and he’s one of the most pleasant, positive, and engaging prospects I’ve encountered in my years covering basketball recruiting. It’s going to be fun watching him to continue to grow and develop as a player starting next fall in an Iowa uniform.
And I should add, Toussaint is going to really help Iowa basketball as well. Iowa needs a quick and defensive minded guard on their roster and they now have it. Like I said, it was a good day for Fran McCaffery, the McCaffery family, and Iowa basketball.
Can Toren Young and the Iowa run game get going?
TWO QUESTIONS
IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR IOWA’S RUNNING GAME?
While many fans have been stewing about the snap counts for Noah Fant, the larger and probably more important story of the Hawkeye football season is the running game grinding to a halt in the last three weeks.
Not that it was great this year, but it was decent to average. Then in the last three weeks Iowa has rushed for 135 yards against Penn State, 118 against Purdue, and an anemic 64 yards against Northwestern last week.
When you are an Iowa team built around a balanced attack where the run sets up the play action passing game, averaging 105 yards per game in the three more critical games of the season that decided your fate in the Big Ten West, that’s simply not going to get the job done.
Frankly, the Iowa run game hasn’t been great this year. Ideally, in good seasons, the Hawkeyes would like to be around 170-175 a game on the ground if it’s going well. They have exceeded that number three times this year: Northern Illinois, Northern Iowa, and Maryland.
Which leads to the question, what happened to Iowa’s run game this year?
It starts up front and the offensive line, while doing a good job of protecting Nate Stanley, hasn’t been able to establish dominance in the run game. Once again this year, opponents have loaded up the box with 8 or 9 players (and sometimes more) and it’s next to impossible to win those type of battles on a consistent basis.
The other part of the equation is the running backs. Akrum Wadley could make up for a lot of shortcomings last year with a banged up offensive line. This year, there’s no Wadley. Ivory Kelly-Martin is probably the closest back to Wadley and he’s been battling an ankle injury much of the season which has limited his explosiveness. Toren Young is a straight ahead back and Mekhi Sargent has honestly been a pleasant surprise this year.
This week could set up well for Iowa to get healthy running the ball, but overall, the run game hasn’t been great this year and that’s something they will have address in the off season.
SHOULD WE BE WORRIED ABOUT IOWA’S RUN DEFENSE?
Iowa’s run defense has been really good pretty much all season.
Prior to last week, only Wisconsin, who rushed for 210 yards, really gashed the Hawkeyes and 33 of those yards came on a late game run where Iowa was selling out and got burned.
On the other hand, they have held Iowa State, UNI, Minnesota, and Maryland under 100 yards. And Northern Illinois and Indiana barely cracked the century mark with 101 yards rushing.
Then last week happened. A Northwestern team that came in averaging just 93 yards a game on the ground gashed Iowa for 184 yards.
This week the Hawkeyes face an Illinois team that while not a great squad, can run the football. The Illini are averaging 262 yards per game on the ground, which is second best in the Big Ten. In other words, we are going to find out this weekend if the Hawkeyes run defense is hitting a bit of a wall or if last week was simply a blip on the radar.
Much like the Iowa rushing attack, we are 10 games into the year and it’s unlikely to change a whole lot, so while the Illini are probably going to hit on a few runs, the best guess is Iowa’s rush defense ends up being pretty good in the last two games.
PREDICTION
This will be the week we have all been waiting for…an Iowa running back finally cracks the 100 yard mark on the ground.
