I am not lighting up my cigar. I am a retired high school offensive line coach and watching this offensive line makes me physically ill. Not only are they physically inadequate, which is at least forgivable, but they are either knot heads or very poorly coached. Three times the left guard failed to deliver a kick out block on a counter gap play. Once because he blocked the wrong guy and twice because he used poor technique. But the absolute worst was a third and one late in the game. The play was power gap, which means that the fullback would be the kick out blocker and the left guard would pull through the hole. Kentucky lined up a man head up on the center and two men lined up on the guards. The right tackle was uncovered. The assignment for that scheme would be for the tackle to block inside, which he did. The right guard‘s first priority would be to also block inside on the nose guard, because the center would have been required to block the man over the left guard, who was pulling. Instead the right guard chipped the inside of the man on him, which would have been his assignment if the center had been uncovered. The result was that the nose guard was unblocked and stuffed Paterson for a loss. That kind of thing has happened all season and is simply inexcusable.
Offensive line.
- Thread starter Aethelstan
- Start date
I'm no OL coach but that was very hard to watch. Has been all year. There is no way we can retain our OL coach. Remember, most of these guys were high rated or decently rated guys. It's not like we are Ohio(or some small school like that), with their OL recruits.
Thanks for the explanation. It's good to hear why a play didn't work. I just see our rb get gobbled up in the backfield which happens to often.
The communication/understanding assignments by the O line this year has been lacking. What is being described here is a clear case of not recognizing player alignment. That should not happen with the current guys playing Guard for the Hawks in game 13. This is either a Barnett (teaching) problem or the lineman are just incapable of learning and Iowa needs to move on.
Good post OP.
I coach 9th grade football, and have been baffled all season by the failures in pass pro. Not just being physically beaten, but failing to identify the rush and execute a basic protection scheme. They routinely made the kinds of mistakes that I would only expect to see once or twice a game from a solid 9th grade offensive line by week 3. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, there are dozens of high school offensive line coaches in the state of Iowa whose units function better than Iowa's does.
I coach 9th grade football, and have been baffled all season by the failures in pass pro. Not just being physically beaten, but failing to identify the rush and execute a basic protection scheme. They routinely made the kinds of mistakes that I would only expect to see once or twice a game from a solid 9th grade offensive line by week 3. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, there are dozens of high school offensive line coaches in the state of Iowa whose units function better than Iowa's does.
Barnett has a nice story and I’m rooting for him but the results would suggest he’s not meant for this program.
I know a lot of quality human beings who struggle to have high level professional success. I like to see it happen but without knowing the specifics inside the program, based on visible performance, I have to assume he is not getting it done.
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