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For all you Brian Haters

I'm not here bashing anyone Homer. I'm simply giving you my perspective on who I believe is primarily accountable for the success or failure of any organization. Managers decide who comes into their organization, what role they fill, and what they need to be successful. You will seldom if ever find me being critical of a player for anything. 99% of them are giving their all whether their all is good enough or not. If it's not, than that's a direct reflection on the person who was primarily responsible for putting them in that position in the first place. In the case of the Iowa offense that's the Iowa OC.
I have suggested earlier that MAYBE Brian has had issues as it relates to managing the offense. Certainly, putting too much on the QBs (particularly, Spencer) was questionable given the foreseeable issues we had with pass-pro. More emphasis arguably should have been placed on simplification UNTIL the protection improved. So, in that regard, I concede that you may have a point there.

However, how has Brian NOT been held accountable here? While every other assistant got big bumps ... Brian did not. What's more, another liable actor here (O'Keefe) saw his role changed.

Obviously, things were noted in the offseason ... and that prompted them to add Budmayr to the staff as an analyst (aka, a window into the mind of a QB - for the benefit of Brian). This strikes me as a step toward accountability for Brian. They must have thought that MAYBE something was being lost in translation in the O ... when going from Brian to Ken ... and then from Ken to the QBs. Thus, now the QBs are getting their message straight from the horses ass ... ummm ... I mean, mouth. Perhaps this will clear up some issues. Furthermore, in response to issues with the O ... changes have been made with the routes being run AND how the information is getting processed by the QB. Again, these strike me as tangible steps taken to help change (and improve) things.

What would you propose should happen?

Also, when blame has been thrown out by Brian (or Kirk) ... you don't hear them throwing individuals under the bus. However, you will hear them call a spade a spade if it relates to the quality of blocking that they're observing (they simply don't call out individuals). To the public, you can be sure that the coaches will not throw their guys under the bus. However, behind closed doors - those guys are expected to break down the cut-ups of their errors during the off-season. They need to own their errors ... recognize them and own them, so that they won't REPEAT them!

For instance, I won't hesitate to be critical of DeJong ... because certainly he was a turnstile at times last season. However, if you also read my posts ... you'll also hear that I'm an ardent defender of DeJong as well. This falls philosophically in line with the FACT that these guys are the OWNERS of their own errors. They MUST be ... or they won't improve. Similarly, I'd expect that you'd hear the staff being very critical of themselves (at least behind closed doors) ... because they want to improve every bit as much as they want their guys to improve. You better believe that the staff is trying to do everything within their power to review and improve the processes they are implementing ... in order to further push forward the development of position-groups that struggled. In fact, aren't these the very reasons we've seen the changes that I've already been mentioning?
 
I don't disagree with much of the above, but I'm going to go in a little different direction.
"Why has our offense struggled so consistently for so long"?

IMO, a large part of it has been scheme. And we are still trying to do things, in the same way, that haven't worked for years. The list is a long one, ranging from blocking assignment to route trees to mismatch of player strengths to...... but that conversation is for another day.

Today I want to talk about recruiting and talent, particularly about 2 positions.

1) WR Over the years, this has been an area of substantial weakness. ISU and many other lesser school have consistently had stronger wr rooms. A large part of the problem is that the key wr skills (hands, quickness, body control, rebounding mentality), are inate and don't readily lend themselves to what we do best---development. I think our recruiting shortcomings here are a combination of not seeking the key skills and looking in the wrong places. My approach in the order of priority would be:
a) make offers to selected high profile players nationally--probably be fruitless but worth the try
b) look at wrs on teams with the very high profile QBs. These kids often "make" the QB and are often overlooked.
c) search for kids that are great "floor" BB players (think Perkins) but that can't shoot and probably played on football teams too weak to get noticed. And yes, hs QBs are another excellent hunting ground.

OL We have had stars but not strength across the line or good depth. IMO, this position is the most difficult to separate ability from level of competition. Thus a kid from a small school should only be looked at if he's been a multi-sport super star. Yet, without looking it up, I'm guessing that over the last 10 years we've recruited 15 small school kids that didn't fit that criteria and maybe 13 didn't become significant contributors. Bad percentage. Imagine if we had recruited nationally and even 7 of those 13 had become average B10 linemen.

Lots of work to do on the offensive side of the ball!
You know what ... I don't necessarily disagree with you.

If you look at Iowa's defensive scheme ... our scheme's emphasis on developing football IQ and reinforcing football fundamentals are all facets that help our defenders translate their game to the NFL. However, in contrast to NFL defensive schemes - we're not a big pressure team AND, for the most part, we keep things "simple" insofar that we try to let the guys play fast. Of course, all that said, if you know anything about how Phil has his guys play in the secondary - he really has his guys "detail" things. So while there may be a simplicity to things (schematically) - he doesn't let his guys skim over the details. The devil is in the details.

Anyhow, my point being ... that Iowa's defense is successful ... but, for a team that is reputed to pride itself upon being a developer of NFL talent, it's interesting that our defensive schemes are a bit of a "middle ground" ... insofar that they're designed to explicitly exploit failings within the college game ... but guys develop enough of the core skills that translate well to the NFL.

So this begs the question ... why don't we do the same thing on O? Why can't we still pride ourselves on developing elite blockers ... but still run schemes that allow guys to play fast? Why can't our guys still be fundamentally sound AND develop a high football IQ ... all while schematically exploiting the shit out of failings in the college game (the failings of collegiate defenses)?

I would imagine that there should/could be a middle-ground here too. I don't see the Hawks manipulating tempo ... in order to exploit the stupidity of so many collegiate players. I think that our defense is already successful enough ... that we don't want to run the danger of leaving them on the field too much. However, there are schematically other things that can be done (as it relates to how data is processed by players, types of read that are made, etc). Hell, if you look at prior incarnations of Northwestern's O ... they've managed to generate serious yardage (at least in the past) ... all while implementing just a different version of an O that attempts to control field position and possess the football.

Anyhow ... that was my swipe at playing the devils advocate.

That said ... I don't expect seismic shifts from Kirk. So I'll continue to keep my expectations reasonable and within the scope of what is most likely to occur (otherwise, Iowa's O is too prone to lead expectations toward disappointment).
 
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This is an instance where the business example really is not different (from my prior education example).
A significant part of being a good leader is teaching the people you oversee how to do their job right. It's essential in almost all human shared undertakings.

There are many people that cannot learn what you're trying to teach. I have boxfuls of such people.
 
There are a lot of CEOs who are crappy at their jobs but they took over when the business was built by a good CEO. They still take credit for things that they had nothing to do with. To this day the best CEO I ever worked for/with was a guy who came up through the ranks. He built the company so soundly that it survived several crappy CEOs.
You see this all the time in coaching too. Maybe not as long but coaches succeed right off the bat in their new job. Then 3-4 years later once all the previous regimes players are all gone and they haven't brought in same type of talent and aren't as good of a coach as their predecessor things start to trend downwards. Good example is Steve Prohm. Hoiberg left him a very talented group of players and was great his 1st 2 years but after the upperclassmen were gone it just started to trend downhill.
 
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You see this all the time in coaching too. Maybe not as long but coaches succeed right off the bat in their new job. Then 3-4 years later once all the previous regimes players are all gone and they haven't brought in same type of talent and aren't as good of a coach as their predecessor things start to trend downwards. Good example is Steve Prohm. Hoiberg left him a very talented group of players and was great his 1st 2 years but after the upperclassmen were gone it just started to trend downhill.
I was focused on the staff more than the players when it comes to football. Things go downhill a lot faster in football, even with the same players. And with the advent of the portal, things will happen even quicker. Take Nebraska as an example. Today's savior recruits become tomorrow's portal transfers to somewhere else.
 
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