Nope.
I’ve seen a year, and 100% of Lester’s offense just outside zone into the boundary, then punt on second down.
*****Mark Gronowski COMMITS to IOWA*****
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I’ve seen a year, and 100% of Lester’s offense just outside zone into the boundary, then punt on second down.
They could have run a QB sneak with Stanley on every single play that game and probably gotten > 100 yards. 🤷♂️
Not sure. I really couldn’t get a read on how good or bad the receivers were because the QB play was atrocious. Maybe they’re decent, but I really can’t tell. From my eye, the QB play was much worse than any other position including WR and OL. I’m hoping a quality QB can raise the level of play of the guys on the roster. I’m not against picking up more receivers, though.
I'm genuinely curious, from your perspective, does KF need more credit? Beyond what he currently gets, including his compensation?
Just keeping it straight.
There are posters that cherry pick, only giving credit to others, while only giving blame to KF.
KF is the head coach. When it comes to all things Iowa football, he ultimately should get the credit and the blame for everything.
Then you have the people who have completely and unfairly slandered KF and the Iowa football program for years. It has not even been close to warranted.
So interpret it as you will
And I think Lester went after AND got Hank Brown out of the transfer portal because of the potential he saw in him.
There are A LOT of nuances, concepts, and routes that would not be defined by a playbook.
My interpretation is you're trying to ruin any good news with your fanatical and foolish hero worship
Everything under Brian was a miss, but that's water under the bridge.
You would be incorrect. Barnes worked for KF initially BEFORE he met Kirks daughter. He worked for KF in several assistant roles from 2009 to 2012. Thats when he met Joanne. Then he left and went to Vandy from 2013 to 2016. He was their recruiting coord. The KF hired him to fill that role at Iowa. He is now Chief of staff and General manager. His duties include recruiting and NIL opportunities, and NFL liaison.
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Correct. He didn't get married and then got the job. He got married for job security.
I kid!
Brian should have been hired to Coach TEs only after the Pats and stayed there happy and content under Pops , He would still be on the Iowa sideline but mi$takes were made .
Overall, my opinion is very under informed in any of the inside specifics of the situation.
From my under informed position, BF seemed to be a qualified candidate for the OC position, at the time of his promotion.
But I didn't necessarily think putting him at OC would be a good idea, because I knew fans would have an oversensitive reaction to the "nepotism". KF was already taking unwarranted heat for having a serviceable offense that many fans found to be too conservative. So to me, bringing on an additional sensitivity from fans seemed to be a volatile situation that I would have tried to have avoided.
I'm also under informed to know for sure if BF was retained too long. As mentioned, I could have seen the reasoning of getting BF out of the OC position at any point, just to avoid all the negative noise from the fan base.
But I can also see where KF could have retained him, based on having all the inside info that gave him a much better understanding of the overall situation, than that of the average negative fan. I'm sure KF understood the reasons that the offense went from serviceable under BF to broken under BF in '22, and remained that way for most of the '23 season, to have had very little to do with BF. And I'm sure KF understood those things were going to fix themselves, regardless of the OC.
It's awfully hard to make significant changes to a program when it's in the midst of a good deal of prolonged success. Especially if you have reason to believe that the person you're letting go really isn't the reason that the offense went from serviceable to broken in '22.
But I also don't take it as a given that KF would have retained BF had Beth not stepped in.
Again, from my under informed position, having BF as QB coach seemed to be a mistake. Although I understand KF's reasoning for having made that move at the time. From what I've heard, KOK was too often butting in and mucking up pre-snap communications. So moving BF to QB coach was an attempt to streamline and simplify pre-snap communication
Everything is easier with 2 future NFL all pros, another legit NFL starter, and 2 more 3rd team/honorable mention BIG level lineman. (Further proof of lack of concept with the old scheme) Everyone likes to ignore the talent we had on those lines when they make that comment- like Lester and Co. are able to *magically* make QB sneaks more aligned with what this line is actually good at but he refuses to call them. How would that 2019 line look if they were given LESS than a full offseason to adapt to a completely new system? Point is, why do people even compare the two when there's a mountain of difference between them? When you have a new system you do have to pay the piper. This ain't the NFL. Time constraints are real.
What were Brian's qualifications to coordinate an offense?
So.... In your mind it was the impending fan's outrage that made BF's hire bad?
Holy shit - that's a special kind of take.... Even from you
Ultimately, KF is responsible for everything.
Yes, the OC also plays a big role.
The offense, with recruiting and player development as it was under BF, was serviceable until his last two seasons. And those were not the reasons it went from serviceable to broken
Seemed to have been a good position coach.
A lifetime of having been around football and good coaches.
Time spent with one of the best NFL coaches and organizations of all-time.
At least comparable to any other coach who had never been an OC. Can't move up until you've moved up
The fact You still defend that hire is either apathy or delusion . If Kirk really wanted Brian to succeed He would have advocated for Him to be a OC at a far lower level not a B1G high profile job with less than elite offensive talent .
How does an offense go from 5 years of serviceability under BF to completely broken in '22?
It was the attrition to the O-line and the fact that the players forced to step in were nowhere near ready to play. BF had very little to do with any of that.
Football is won up-front. When you have a season where the worst O-line I've seen at Iowa in 40 years gets forced into action, you aren't going to get much from the offense, no matter who the OC is. Then consider that Iowa's offense had always been built around around its O-line, and you have an offense that's completely broken.
The O-line made incremental improvements in '23 that I'm sure would have been more substantial had Iowa not been forced to play an emergency QB, that happened to be the worst QB I've seen play significant snaps at Iowa in 40 years. That dynamic largely kept the offense broken.
The two most important things to an offense are its O-line and its QB. When you're forced to play the worst at both that I've seen in 40 years, I don't see why anyone would try to make the offensive struggles into anything else.
People want to talk about conservatism, lack of recruiting dynamic playmakers, etc. These factors may have compounded the difficulty experienced by the broken offense. But they were completely secondary in it all. The offense would have been broken regardless. And those factors existed before the offense broke and never kept it from being serviceable in those years.
BF may not have ran the dynamic offense that many wanted. Having him at QB coach probably would have surfaced some problems in the long run. But the offense going from serviceable to broken, had very little to do with him. And if an offense is serviceable, that's really all that matters. Fans are not what an offense is designed to serve
Not sure why the promotion has to be characterized as KF having wanted BF to succeed.
I would assume Iowa football has always been KF's top priority
If that were true He would not have made anyone OC who had zero OC experience no matter what the last name, That hire was the 1 time Kirk put blood before program , He survived it but Brian will never ever get teh chance again at a P5 or above for the mistake
You're making a bunch of leaps about things you have no way of knowing.
To me, BF was qualified enough for the promotion. I believe Barta called him "uniquely qualified".
You heard very little complaining about BF his first five seasons at OC. Then, the offense broke, and all of the sudden in was blatant nepotism
Wasn’t Brian in charge of recruiting and developing depth so that those things don’t happen? Lester has iowas QB room in a place that is light years beyond what it was just this time last year.
Having a real OC makes a big difference.
But yeah Brian was good OC and has no blame to share in the fact that he ran the worst offense in P4 football multiple years in a row 😂
1. "Multiple" is an exaggeration of "two".
2. Refer to the "line play" thread for your answers pertaining to the O-line attrition and the developmental hurdles that faced the players forced to prematurely step in.
3. Hill was an emergency QB.
The same people now calling Cade a recruiting bust were thrilled to have acquired him at the time. It seemed that injuries played a big part in him not panning out.
Labas was to have been next in line in '23. It seems some off the field issues took him out of that opportunity. I don't have any problem with people calling him a recruiting miss. But over the years KF has nailed recruiting high character guys. The narrative around recruiting misses is unnecessary.
Lainez wasn't ready, as most true freshman are not.
A couple other QB's transferred out, which is the nature of college ball these days. But how many teams ever really have more than two QB's that are ready to play at any given time? Shoot, how many teams are praying they even have one guy that's any good.
Iowa was set up to have two guys in Cade and Labas that they felt were ready. Give the staff credit for having the foresight to have picked up an emergency QB in Hill.
'23 saw QB1 get injured and the guy that was set to be QB2 remove himself from the equation with off the field issues. An outlier of a season that left Iowa playing an emergency QB. Nothing close to the recruiting and development narrative it's been turned into
Register beat writers Chad Leistikow and Tyler Tachman analyze what the Gronowski add means for Iowa both now & moving forward.
Link to listen:
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Link to listen:
What adding Mark Gronowski means for Iowa football's 2025 quarterback room - Hawk Central Hour
Iowa football made the transfer-portal splash fans were looking for Tuesday, officially landing quarterback Mark Gronowski from South Dakota State. He arrives with one year remaining following four successful seasons with the Jackrabbits, two of which ended with an FCS national title. With...
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Because he was using someone else's recruits who were coached by someone else. Players who were skilled and able to make plays.
Then once those players graduated, our offense gradually got worse.
Because Brian had no knowledge of what to look for in talent with recruiting and was terrible at developing players.
That's why he wasn't qualified for his position.
****ing dumbass.
All an uninformed leap driven by the need to fit a narrative.
Again, the worst O-line and worst QB I've seen in 40 years at Iowa is completely straightforward.
With those factors having occurred, there is absolutely no reason to even consider making it into something else unless you have a narrative to fill
Factually untrue. We can actually prove what players were recruited by which coach. Can't worm your way out of those indisputable facts.
It's no coincidence that the players recruited under Brian were starting the same time the offense got worse. An OLine can only do so much when the other team is literally quoted saying "we knew what they were going to do". This is due to Brian's one dimensional play calling. We had the same guys on the line as last year, but our line play improved. I wonder what the difference was? A real head scratcher.
You seem pretty miserable over the Gronowski commitment. Quite telling.
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