Like the B1G west.
"If this team's got a pulse on offense, they have every right to compete for a College Football Playoff spot."
- Thread starter Franisdaman
- Start date
The question posed was regarding 1st year offenses, Grubb and Deboer had worked together for many years at previous institutions, but to the Washington players it was his first year.
Most of those same guys that knew how to win together are back this year. Plus if you do not think the stats of even more first downs would help out our defense idk what to tell you. Given the number of snaps our defense faced last year it is truly amazing they were still a top 5 or so defense. Besides that, it had to be hard to believe in much as a player last year, when you would go out there and go 3 and out over and over. Not saying they ever gave up, but it had to be tough to believe in. So yeah improving stats will go a long way. As for them adjusting to a new system, I take it as a good sign when our extremely football knowledgeable and stout defense says our offense is pitching them fits. That sounds to me like the offensive players are adjusting pretty well to a new system and maybe even have some excitement and swagger building with it.
Good ol' KF having an "open" competition with only 1 QB competing...
are you saying that a competent and proven OC can actually coach the players they are tasked with coaching?
People blabbing…”they have every right to compete for the CFP”….duh, every team has that!
I think the question is, if we dropped 1 or 2 games, would we still be in the running? I think if we drop 1, but not by much, we would probably be in.
Keys are not bad losses and losing early is better than losing late.
We can not be a punting team anymore period. Yeah it was funny and all but if we are doing that again we are not good and should be looked past for the tournament.
No Oregon, USC, Michigan or Penn State this year
I think it should read "they have every ability to compete..." everyone has the "right".
I think we can compete with OSU. Can we win? Possibly. Even if we don't we need it to be close, and not a 17-14 kind of close, but more of a 28-24 kind of close, so everyone knows we can put points on the board against a team like that. Problen is if we can't pull that one off early in the year, the team needs to hold it together and it would be nice if they did not drop another. If they drop 2, do we get in???? IDK. At that point we had better hope the second loss is again where we can put points on the board AND it would have to be against another team that is doing really well. But it would be really iffy. So, if we lose to OSU it had better be close and we had better be able to put points on the board and then we probably can not lose another. Tall task, but doable. We play every game to win!!
Get some turnovers and win field position. Eat clock. Phil applies the stranglehold.
anyone expecting the offense to be fixed in one year is delusional
I think you are confusing great and functional. No one thinks it will be great, but we expect much improvement. A truly functional offense.
Lester has been an OC and a head coach, so he can tell what the OL is and what he needs to do to work with any weakness there. Brian just kept pounding with the same hammer.
That is it right there. Like I said if we can put some points on the board against good teams, it changes everything. Keeps their offense on the bench and gives our defense time to rest a little. I mean the National champs only put 26 on us. If we could have mustered 17 or 21 points, that is a totally different ball game.
I mean, that's the story every year. We have top 10 units on both Defense and Special Teams. If our offense was 70th in the nation, we'd be in the B1G Championship every year. Now that the expanded playoffs are here, it's the same situation.
after campbell, benson, and jacobs left i thought we would take a big step back at lb but we’ve just plugged and chugged since. amazing. still find it hard to believe iowa could have the #2 unit though. we’ll see.
JFC, some posters talking about competing with OSU? Y’all are fvcking nuts lol. The offense won’t be that much improved guys. The cupboard is bare and it literally could not have been worse last year.
The cupboard is bare? I seen an article that we have more depth (more B10 starts) in the QB room the ever. We have some darn good TE's. We have talent out the wazoo at RB. Let's hope KF working closely with the OL and all their starts and age finally come together. What's left wr?? Not much proven ability there, but they had Hill throwing to them too. Plus if you get Wetjen the ball while he is already moving and he is up to speed in 2 -3 more steps, most teams do not have anyone that can run him down from behind and that is IF they started off directly behind him and do not have to come from 10 yards to 1 side or the other. PLUS it has always been a given that to play RB at Iowa you had better be able to catch the ball as well. SO I imagine there will be plenty of targets to throw to. So no the cupboard is not bare.
I’m afraid I might blackout during one or both of them
Seems like that every year. As for this time...great to have our LBs back but Coop was a game changer. I think we're going to miss him. Hopefully we can score some offensive TDs to make up for it.
I thought we might lose some defensive talent due to someone looking for a pay day.
We had all that coming into last year lol. Keep dreaming.
Yeah even last year we scored 14 points on the first two offensive possessions in the first quarter?
I won’t believe anything is actually different unless it stays different a few games into the year.
Hill was a backup going into the season as an unknown. Much like we have now, unknowns. Same starter at #1. You have a point regarding OC, but my point is how much can we realistically expect the offense to improve from last year? I would love to be wrong and the offense ranks higher than 80 or so, but I just don’t see it.
KF must have a boilerplate for these announcements and swaps out the 1st & 2nd string QB as needed.
Has the 2nd string ever “won the job?”
If we score 24 against Ohio State, we will win that game..
Per Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, "...'if' is the middle word in life...". And it's the operative word in your post 😀
Well, I think we can expect all we want, realistically like I said have we ever had 3 Qb's with D1 game experience? Granted Marco does not have much. Sullivan is extremely accurate if nothing else and has played against our defense and PSU's, so it is not like he got his experience in mop up duty late in the 4th. I think having a really good QB can improve this offense a ton. I think the OL has one more year under their belts and a new system that maybe helps them out a little, so I think we can expect them to improve a fair amount. Defenses not stacking the box and I think we run the ball much better. Only question really in the improvement area is at wr, but again hopefully better routes and a better QB make that group better too. How much can we improve?? We will see.
Another factor that I hadn’t considered is we no longer have a cheat code with field position as Taylor is gone. Like I said before, would love to be wrong, but I don’t see the offense improving enough to make us competitive against OSU. I hate to say it, but I expect us to get smoked.
OSU game aside, excellent point regarding the punter. Taylor was truly a difference maker and perhaps Iowa's MVP last season. Remember, the sport is called "foot"ball.
That being said, I'm really excited for Dakin. I think he is a plus punter right away, and will develop into an excellent punter. There will be a couple growing pains, as I believe he is 19. Whereas, Tory came in at 22. But Rhys has an electric leg and the ball sounds great coming off his foot.
Keep 'em coming Australia. Huge credit to KF for understanding the game at a level that took him across the world to land these guys
Yeah I agree there might be some growing pains, but we had the best punter in the nation too, so some drop off is expected for a little while anyway. BUT (big but) we never should have been punting that much or that distance anyway. If we can move the dang ball a little, we might not miss having that high caliber punter.
