What's more, in '14, Bower, Jewell, and Spearman were each just in their 2nd year on campus. Even though Spearman had the most prior experience ... he was mainly just playing a rush-end in our raider package. Thus, there was really little reading and reacting that he had to do. Thus, when it came to intricacies of executing all the requisite reading and reacting ... Spearman was overwhelmed.
While Coach Reid was a terrific coach, I think that he threw too much at the young LBs that season. Rather than simplifying things so that the guys could play fast ... he deluged them with really thick booklets detailing the game-plan. Consequently, our LBs played pretty tentatively that season ... and it was one of our worse defensive efforts in a while. The next season, Reid learned his lesson ... and there was much more emphasis on playing fast and having the guys know that it was okay to make mistakes (if you're going to make a mistake - you may as well be decisive about it).
When you look at the set-up for Iowa's LBs in '18 ... each of the projected starters have been on campus for 3 years. Furthermore, they've had the same position coach for the entire period. Wallace is a guy who falls under the Norm Parker school of thought ... he'd much rather try to keep things simple so that the guys can play fast. That's a particularly nice philosophy to have when breaking in new LB starters. On top of all that ... back in '14, the talent level within the LB room was somewhat limited ... and that limited the competition. In contrast, in '18, while the guys are really inexperienced in terms of live positional reps ... there is quite a bit of talent in the room. Hopefully that competition ends up producing some great results!
