Newest commitment, TE/LB
- Thread starter MepoDawg#
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Edds was a 3-star recruit through both the rivals and the 247 recruiting services. It was only through scout that he was evaluated as a 4-star recruit. Also, most recruiting services had him pegged as a middle linebacker - and he ended up playing on the outside at LEO for the Hawks.
And unless I'm mistaken, Edds had an OSU offer. He was a nice get. Let's hope this kid plays like Edds.
So Iowa shouldn't offer him because no other FBS school has even though he is 6'4 218 with a 4.5 40?
Also don't use fallacies to push your agenda and bash a recruit. This kid is something to be excited about.
Agree with some that this looks like a nice pick up for us with the size and speed. I have been down on the program but I am much more encouraged by what I am seeing in the recruitment efforts this season. It's not entirely about the stars or the other P5 offers. These guys actually look athletic and like ball players from their metrics and videos.
I get all the talk about posters liking skills sets the commitments have and Iowa developing lower ranked guys, but what is every other football team missing here that a majority of the commitments have NO offers from major schools? That is a major problem. The 60+ teams that were better than Iowa last year didn't think these guys were good enough. Neither did the 60+ teams worse than Iowa last year. The guys that Iowa is getting, it's not a recipe for moving up the rankings - it's a sign of a regime that is tired, and going through the motions until their contract is up.
Iowa's in trouble folks. Real trouble. The man who rebuilt Iowa is not going to do it again.
Iowa's in trouble folks. Real trouble. The man who rebuilt Iowa is not going to do it again.
Past the top 15 to 20 recruiting classes in the nation - recruiting service rankings are completely non-metric measures. They have no legitimate way to measure how well particular guys might fit particular systems, they don't interpolate how a guy might potentially grow and physically develop within a program, and they're still limited on how many guys they get out and see.
How often have we heard about 3-star guys in college football who didn't garner more "stars" simply because they didn't participate in the combine circuit? How often have those guys turned into something more like 4 or 5 star talent? Mind you - I'm not even talking about Iowa football here ... I'm talking about the complete college football landscape!
Recruiting services have no real way of normalizing the analytics in order to account for the size of school or quality of football played at the school. The knee-jerk reaction that most people have is to assume that larger schools have to face a higher level of competition due to the size of their student body (since it is, in principle, harder to make the football team) OR that private schools (often Catholic school leagues) have a higher level of competition because they typically have more resources to "recruit" athletes to play for them.
Recruiting services don't have systematic ways of evaluating the potential of athletes who are relatively new to football. If you look at Ahmad Wagner last year - while Iowa landed him as a hoops recruit - he essentially jumped out of nowhere in the football recruiting scene because he was so dominant when he actually tried playing football.
Lastly, recruiting services have absolutely NO IDEA how to measure or quantify the work ethic or attitude of a young athlete. If a guy doesn't have an impressive work-ethic - then there's no chance that the guy can ever even scratch the surface of their potential, let alone, exceed it.
The point of all of the above is the following:
For Iowa football, recruiting stars might just prove to be worth very little if the guys actually are excellent fits for our system. Of course, that does imply that Iowa will continue to have depth issues. It really is hard to have strong depth if most of the talent on your roster is "developmental" in nature.
How do the Hawkeyes circumvent the aforementioned issue? They win! It's as simple as that ... if they win more, they'll be able to attract players who are more "plug-n-play." It was just back in 2013 when some folks thought that Ferentz was engineering his "last run." However, the uninspiring record of the 2014 season - particularly given all our problems on O - fed fuel to the fire of the "doom and gloomers." I don't disagree with the sentiment that Greg Davis is probably just not a good fit at Iowa. However, I am a lot more optimistic about Iowa's defense under Phil Parker - particularly as the LBs get more experience.
Hey, Homer- I hope you don't mind, but I edited your post for people who might want shorter version:
Welcome aboard Mr. Welch! Please pay no attention to some of the losers on this site who only know how to be negative. We are stoked to have you in the Hawkeye Family.
Actually, my (long) post is less of a justification of what Iowa does - and more of a jab at folks who believe that recruiting services and their analytics are all that accurate.
Frankly, if you look at what Minnesota has done over the past few years ... they're philosophically doing exactly what Iowa WANTS to do. The problem is that the Minnesota players actually "believe in" Coach Kill and his philosophy - whereas, I'm not convinced that Ferentz still has his players "believing in" his system. If they're not "all-in" ... then I too am skeptical about how successful the Hawks might be ... even if they do have the next Sanders, Clark, and Gallery. This is the great uphill climb that long-established coaches often have with both players (and fan-bases).
But there is a positive correlation between recruiting rankings and success on the field. Obviously the correlation isn't +1.0, so there are exceptions of both under and over achieving compared to recruiting results. The thing is; Iowa's lackluster recruiting has yielded lackluster results the last several years. So for one to think that things are going to get better with similar recruiting, they would have to ignore recent history, which is the best information we have.
Now I have no problem if somebody wants to have complete faith in KF and think that there are going to be diamonds in the rough found in abundance, but to take 'jabs' at folks who are thinking logically about the situation is silly.
The one hope I do have is that with all the early commitments that the staff is sign of good things in the future. (Because obviously just because a kid isn't rated highly doesn't mean that he actually isn't a stud, see: BOB SANDERS!!!!) But I fear that it will take too long to manifest and/or KF and his coaching staff has miscalculated the ideal pace of commits (that phrasing isn't perfect, but hopefully you get the idea) for this recruiting class.
Maybe. It is also possible that they have better coaches and players. And even if the difference is that the players don't "believe in" KF, then that is still on KF. Hopefully you are right and the "believe in" switch will be turned back on this season.
The problem with the correlation of which you speak is that it is a trivial one. Of course, the obvious high-quality recruits will reap positive rewards to the teams that land them IF they're reasonably well coached. This is like saying that you're more likely to catch a walleye if you're fishing for them during spawning season.
Because the correlation is so trivial - it has little to any true value. For the most part, "storied" programs land the highly regarded recruits. And, if the program isn't a "storied" program - then it's one with exceptionally deep pockets. While many like to point to Oregon as a fashionable "maverick" team that bucks the trend ... who truly believes that they'd even be competitive without the label of being "Nike U."
The REAL question that Hawkeye fans probably want to know is how successful could the program be in the recruiting game? Furthermore, what would it take to ensure a really high level of recruiting? It's when grasping at these straws that so many fans seem to think that an alternative to Ferentz must be the answer. I frankly don't know myself - nor do I really care that much either.
Did you watch many Minnesota games over the past few years? Sure, they have talent ... as does Iowa. If you watch their team - they're a very well-coached squad that really plays hard. The secondary is REALLY aggressive and opportunistic - and the team, as a whole, plays tough. Their attitude really reminds me of the Hawkeyes from the early 2000s ... they really want to be the new bullies on the block. Coach Kill has really done a great job of instilling toughness in his group.
As for players not "believing in" KF and/or his system - there's a lot more blame to go around than JUST on the coaches. Some players (not all) seem to get to think that just because they're a better athlete necessarily implies that they're a better player. Some players seem to think that just because THEY THINK they're better, that they actually are better.
Thus, when things don't swing they way some of these players want - rather than blame themselves - they blame the scheme, blame the coaches, and blame the play-calling. Sadly, their families often indulge such behavior. On top of all the above, sports fans don't really seem to realize the damaging influence they can have on their own teams. Rants by fans on social media (and the like) - often further enables the aforementioned culture of entitlement.
To me, if not everybody on the team is "on board" - then while a definite portion of blame is on the coaches ... a lot more is on the players themselves, the fans, and the media than many fans seemingly admit. Of course, in the minds of some fans, they're trying to "liberate" the program from it's current shackles. Good luck to those individuals ... they need to be more careful with what they ask for ... they might just get what they want.
I don't disagree with what you posted at all, however my concern is not with the ranking of recruits. My concern is that no other big schools have offered/recruited a majority of the commitments. And my comment referring to moving up in the rankings is in terms of football team rankings. Recruiting rankings mean almost nothing to me, but I am honestly alarmed at how little competition there was for several of Iowa's commitments. It's a little scary to think about
1. Recruiting has changed. Kids used to commit in Dec. and Jan., after they played their senior year. Now the coaches have to project how these kids are going to progress their senior year. This makes the recruiting landscape a lot more treacherous. You are going to hit some homeruns and going to strike out on a few. This creates a potential gold mine for the coach that works his ass off looking for the under the radar player that they can project better than the other coaches.
2. Iowa seems to be recruiting athletes and molding them into new positions. Particularly, LBs, DEs, DBs, Safetyies...mainly the defense. It's harder to develop offense skill positions, which seems to be our biggest shortcoming.
3. In the recruiting of developmental players, you miss of some, so you have to over-recruit on positions of need, shorting you from developing other positions for the long haul. It seems to be a consistent problem because we have to develop most players. When you have to put in 3 newbies into your LB position in one year, you have a major challenge. Where as the teams that miss on a 4* recruit will most likely have another 4-5* recruit in the next class that can jump in sooner than our developmental players. If you want to succeed, you have to have a high percentage of successes when recruiting the lesser known high school talent.
2. Iowa seems to be recruiting athletes and molding them into new positions. Particularly, LBs, DEs, DBs, Safetyies...mainly the defense. It's harder to develop offense skill positions, which seems to be our biggest shortcoming.
3. In the recruiting of developmental players, you miss of some, so you have to over-recruit on positions of need, shorting you from developing other positions for the long haul. It seems to be a consistent problem because we have to develop most players. When you have to put in 3 newbies into your LB position in one year, you have a major challenge. Where as the teams that miss on a 4* recruit will most likely have another 4-5* recruit in the next class that can jump in sooner than our developmental players. If you want to succeed, you have to have a high percentage of successes when recruiting the lesser known high school talent.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but in the past Iowa would have a very long list of guys they really liked - however, they seemed like they had the philosophy that they'd only offer relatively few of them - that way they could concentrate their efforts on making those guys feel rather "special." They probably also liked such an approach because it gave them more time to evaluate the recruits before actually pulling the trigger and offering them a scholarship.
In recent years, Iowa has missed out A LOT on their second tier recruits (guys who they were still very high on) - simply because they were so slow to actually pull the trigger and offer guys. Given that the recruits out there obviously can tell that the "natives are restless" because of unmet expectations (of fans) - I would surmise that the coaches know that it's more of an uphill climb for them to land their top options. Consequently, my impression is that the coaches are simply choosing to offer more guys - that way they are not perceived as jumping onto the recruitment of a guy too late.
Because the advanced time-frame of recruiting these days - more teams are filling up early - and consequently, they have fewer offers to go out to guys who aren't perceived as "sure things." Furthermore, the more successful programs are able to exploit their perceived attractiveness to recruits - and thus, such programs are more discriminating in who they offer to finish off their recruiting classes.
Even if a recruit doesn't have offers from Power 5 teams - I would then look to see the track record of those teams who are offering the players. For instance, Northern Iowa and North Dakota State, as FCS teams go seem to be really good at identifying talent. Thus, if UNI or NDSU offer a guy that we land - the guy may not be a "plug and play" talent - but the guys presumably has a pretty nice developmental ceiling. Similarly, if Northern Illinois, Ball State, or Marshall offers a guy - the guy probably has talent too. Furthermore, I'm impressed by P.J. Fleck of Western Michigan - I'm willing to bet that he's a good evaluator of talent too.
Obviously, I think that we'd both rather rely more upon Pat Angerer-like 3-star talent or Adrian Clayborn 4-star talent (relatively plug and play) - however, that is simply not where the Iowa program is at RIGHT NOW. However, as I've written many times, the momentum resulting from a little winning can go a long ways towards attracting more plug and play talent.
For the time being, we'll probably have to rely a little more upon mining the Micah Hyde's, Anthony Hitchens, and Drew Ott's of the recruiting landscape. The implication won't be that Iowa will necessarily be less talented ... however, as almost always been the case, our depth may be lacking.
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Iowa has been doing that for quite some time. We've often projected tall, athletic TEs and DEs to left tackle.
For whatever reason, Iowa has really struggled at pulling in elite talent at LB. As a result, Iowa has had to really rely upon pulling in athletes to fill the bill. Jeff Tarpinian was an impressive athlete who only played QB through his full high school career - and yet Iowa projected him at LB. Had it not been for an injury - he would have been a starter instead of Hunter for all those years. Similarly, Anthony Hitchens was viewed as a RB by most recruiting services. Christian Kirksey was viewed as too undersized to play LB by many schools and most recruiting services.
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