Yea. It’s extremely hard to argue with the results on the field. I’d say Iowa only had one game where they weren’t “very good” or better on defense.
Against Nebraska? Or against Iowa State?
Even though we gave up a lot of points against OSU ... it wasn't necessarily due to poor play on D. That had more to do with the D getting caught in pretty untenable situations.
Nebraska. I felt the only shot they had was if Trey Palmer, went David Bell on us. He did unfortunately.
It's not too hard to put down how ridiculous this board can be. Way too may expert whiners.
Have you been reading this posts. You seem to miss the sarcasm mean for many posters here.
You must be because you missed the sarcasm meant for posters here. Are you one of them?
Good news! He is steadily rising on the all time sack list at UI. He has been consistently solid.
You think Bell and Parker are too stupid to play the correct player if he does come back? Bold.
Stupid, but bold.
Would have thought they'd figure out not to play him before starting him for 2 years and lettering in 4.
My man, I'm not saying who should or shouldn't play, or who should go pro or stay or anything. I'm playing devils advocate here. You mean to tell me that no one on here has even some concern that guys staying for a 5th or 6th year COULD lose us a potential really good player or two to the portal. someone with two or three years left compared to the one extra year we would get for the 5th-6th year guy? Ex: someone like Allen Jr. was probably our highest rated DL besides Graves in sometime. Suppose Shannon and Lee both return. We'd have the same starting DL as last year. I'm mean thats great, but given the portal now, it wouldn't be a stretch to think we could lose one of the young bucks over that.....
Explain it to me genius. I was making a joke about how toxic this board is. Just forget it and get back to your wise ways!
For me there’s a ton of resemblance of Joe Evans to Parker Hesse. High school QB, undersized initially, but worked incredibly hard to put on weight and strength and highly reliable and productive DE. Maybe an unorthodox path and success in the NFL awaits for Joe much like Parker with the transition to TE. I would not bet against eithers work ethic!
I'll let you look up the definition of sarcasm if you're actually being serious with that first sentence. Also, jokes are generally supposed to be funny. You were just making up a fact so that you could complain about something that doesn't exist. Carry on with your insufferable ways.
You aren't making unrealistic points. They are things that coaches have to discuss as they manage the roster. I get why players get a COVID year, but my preference would have been the only time a COVID year was granted was for 2021 if a player was a senior in 2020. College game is meant for guys to be in the program for 4-5 years, then move on and others get their shot to move up (not 6 years).
It sucks for the guys can came in to college in 2021 or 2022 as they get stuck sitting behind players who get another year of eligibility. Don't get me wrong, Evans and Ragaini likely help Iowa next year. But it does mean other players play less.
Thanks ... I didn't know that he walked. I knew that he technically still has eligibility remaining ... but didn't know if he was going to stick around.
In your playing the devil's advocate ... for some position groups, I think that you're 100% on target.
However, I anticipate that the DL spot at Iowa may be a different beast altogether. First off ... the Iowa DL has a mighty active rotation. Thus, if a guy can elevate his play to a level where he has the trust of Bell and Niemann ... then the dude is gonna see snaps!
Secondly, these guys ideally hope to end up getting their shot at the NFL ... and they already know that our coaches are top-notch at developing them along that track. However, if there is any added incentive to losing guys like Epenesa, Nixon, and now Van Ness early ... is that recruits and existing young players on the roster KNOW that they still can get their NFL shot through Iowa ... and it needn't even necessarily take a long time. Nixon had 1 year as a top back-up ... and then one year in a covid-shortened season as a starter ... then he was off to the pros. Van Ness just played for us for 2 years ... never even being listed as an "official" starter (although I'm sure that the coaches considered him an effective starter).
Furthermore, as we saw with Linderbaum and Jones ... some guys who initially came to Iowa to play on the DL ... they were found starting positions elsewhere, because their positive attributes were recognized (and it was desired to not waste them).
Anyhow, the fact that we have been seeing a bunch of guys declaring early for the NFL helps to ensure that it minimizes the chances for personnel log-jams to occur.
Another surprisingly positive attribute is that Bell and Niemann must be doing a terrific job at creating a positive learning environment in our DL-room ... because, overall, player retention at that spot has been excellent. The last high-level guy we lost to transfer who went on to be really successful else where was Romeo McKnight ... and he transferred BEFORE we transitioned over to featuring such an active DL rotation.
Lastly, while the Hawks have attempted to target some guys from the portal on the DL in the past ... they still have relied far more heavily upon developing guys in their room. Thus, the guys in the room know that their coaches don't view them as interchangeable and/or expendable.
Of course, in the era of NIL and the transfer portal ... who knows. We may ultimately see an increase in the number of guys who transfer out. However, my guess is the DL room is a place where we'll still main strong for years to come.
My impression is that while most guys in the program love the program ... Ferentz runs the ship so that it is necessarily a grind. I think that this is a natural selective pressure in our program ... and weeds out the guys who simply are less likely to be successful here. I do believe that the coaches do their best to recruit guys who are "fits" and who will "embrace" the developmental grind of the program ... but no filtering process is perfect (false positives will invariably slip in).
My point being ... not a lot of guys WANT to stick around for an extra year (even given the opportunity). If a guy does ... it's because he knows that he'll be a significant contributor. In this context, I don't see that we're seeing much abuse of the extra eligibility by Iowa players.
Kirk talked about Riley being the first dude on the practice field working on individual stuff. Work ethic and doing extra is big with him obviously.
I had only mentioned Crawford and Llewellyn ahead of him because Llewellyn has garnered some attention by being an early guy in while on "clean-up" duty ... AND because both Crawford and Llewellyn were reputed to look very good during the open practices last spring.
I haven't heard anything bad about Bowie. Given that Evans, Waggs, Craig, Van Ness, Hurkett, Reames, and Llewellyn all had seen game reps this season at DT ... for Bowie to earn mention ... he needs to climb up the depth chart and earn snaps. Even with Iowa's very active rotation, there is still only so much opportunity to go around. Guys have to be able (and willing) to make the most of the opportunities that they do receive. Part of that even might involve building niches for yourself ... be it on special teams or whatever.
To be frank, I haven't heard much about Allen either. The main thing that I knew about him is that he had been getting reps at DT ... probably because Van Ness was mostly practicing at DE during the prior 2 camps. Iowa fans were a little geeked because he's an impressive looking dude ... if you go back and look at his fall-camp pics.
That mainly occurred because DeJean got knocked out of the game after playing something like 1 defensive snap. Had he been able to play the entire game - Palmer wouldn't have been able to muster the same mismatches against our D.
Of course, a lot of credit is due to the Nebraska OL ... they did a good job of neutralizing our DL from harassing Thompson too much.
Between the lack of pressure on Thompson ... and the slow adjustment to match up with Palmer (due to DeJean's injury) ... Nebraska was able to jump ahead early.
Of course, all of Iowa's self-inflicted wounds didn't help either.
Really nice post ... completely complemented some of the points I was trying to make. Thanks!
Allen redshirted I believe, so we wouldn't have seen or heard a great deal about him. I'm basically basing off his ranking coming in, and he already as the build to play in our defense.
I thought during bowl prep someone singled out Allen as making a decent jump in development. DL gonna be straight up nasty for a long time. Homer, great posts here on developing and maintaining talent and how quickly these guys can ascend and make the league. Can't remember what year it was, but Iowa coaches visited either Oregon and/or Georgia and quickly learned you need more than 6 DL playing for effectiveness. Both that DL increase in rotation and morning practice were positive outcomes.
A ton of names on DL and Thompson and maybe even Filer can be added to that mix for next fall.
To be honest, they didn't have any 'snap issues' during the bowl game that I recall.
Just wish there was a portal for posters. We'd be happy to help you pack up your keyboard.......
Phil, we talked about this a couple times now. Let's try and keep it positive and if you want to become a hawkeye fan you'll be welcomed aboard. Imagine winning seasons and bowl games. Real sellouts and great fans. If you tailgated once you'd find out how friendly and welcoming Iowa fans are. I'm sure you're a good kid. No reason to try and get people upset for fun. Jealousy is why we see trolls here. No other reason.
