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Total defense of Iowa's opponents

If you want to be angry all the time, I guess.

Some people on here are literally mad at others because they don't complain enough. Me bitching on a forum about the offense isn't going to change it, so I'm not gonna waste the time doing it.
Gotta vent, especially when average offense has us top ten in the nation
 
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I don't expect the OL issues to continue.
God I hope you are right. I initially really liked Logan Jones moving to center but I now think that Myslinski might be the near future. It's just too much to learn that quickly, especially with all of the inexperience around him. No on was really prepared to make the calls. He has trouble just snapping the ball. Almost killed Iowa in the last game.
 
God I hope you are right. I initially really liked Logan Jones moving to center but I now think that Myslinski might be the near future. It's just too much to learn that quickly, especially with all of the inexperience around him. No on was really prepared to make the calls. He has trouble just snapping the ball. Almost killed Iowa in the last game.
That's up to Myslinski to win the job ... and for Logan Jones to not leverage his experience to hold-off any charges from the competition.

Jones has clearly come a long way in quite a short period of time. I wouldn't be in any hurry to write him off. The sort of errors he's making are usually indicative of ones made by a player where the game is still coming at him a little too fast. With a few more camps at the position ... and a lot of self-scouting in the off-season ... I'd look for a lot of growth from him. Once the game truly slows down for him at the position ... then I think that we'll be in MORE than good hands at C. Don't know when that will happen though ...

At OG, Dunker was a guy who's able to contribute too ... but he's been hurt.

Obviously, Stephens is a guy who had made an impression and was starting ... but he got injured in the Wisconsin game.

Colby is just a TR SO ... and I expect that playing a different position to open his second season starting was a learning experience for him. However, that learning experience was made more difficult by the fact that the Hawks did face a bunch of good Ds too. That likely rocked his confidence ... and there was some reversion in his play. Hence the move of him back over to OG.

A bunch of guys on the OL were dinged ... DeJong being at least one of them. That impacts continuity entering the season ... and makes things even harder at a position where gelling together is so important.

On top of all that, Plumb's game continues to be enigmatic. He can play good games ... but then others, he can completely whiff. Consistency definitely seems to be a problem of his - thereby making it pretty darn clear why he hasn't managed to lock down a regular starting spot despite all of his prior playing experience.

For next year, I think that we should be pretty solid at 4 of the 5 OL spots. My primary concern will be at RT. Hopefully that can be a strong incentive for Proctor to remain true to Iowa ... because he's most certainly needed at the RT spot!
 
That's up to Myslinski to win the job ... and for Logan Jones to not leverage his experience to hold-off any charges from the competition.

Jones has clearly come a long way in quite a short period of time. I wouldn't be in any hurry to write him off. The sort of errors he's making are usually indicative of ones made by a player where the game is still coming at him a little too fast. With a few more camps at the position ... and a lot of self-scouting in the off-season ... I'd look for a lot of growth from him. Once the game truly slows down for him at the position ... then I think that we'll be in MORE than good hands at C. Don't know when that will happen though ...

At OG, Dunker was a guy who's able to contribute too ... but he's been hurt.

Obviously, Stephens is a guy who had made an impression and was starting ... but he got injured in the Wisconsin game.

Colby is just a TR SO ... and I expect that playing a different position to open his second season starting was a learning experience for him. However, that learning experience was made more difficult by the fact that the Hawks did face a bunch of good Ds too. That likely rocked his confidence ... and there was some reversion in his play. Hence the move of him back over to OG.

A bunch of guys on the OL were dinged ... DeJong being at least one of them. That impacts continuity entering the season ... and makes things even harder at a position where gelling together is so important.

On top of all that, Plumb's game continues to be enigmatic. He can play good games ... but then others, he can completely whiff. Consistency definitely seems to be a problem of his - thereby making it pretty darn clear why he hasn't managed to lock down a regular starting spot despite all of his prior playing experience.

For next year, I think that we should be pretty solid at 4 of the 5 OL spots. My primary concern will be at RT. Hopefully that can be a strong incentive for Proctor to remain true to Iowa ... because he's most certainly needed at the RT spot!
I hope you're right. I lost faith earlier this season in the line and staff. They'll have to prove that they can get it done before I believe it. The next 2 games could help.
 
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I hope you're right. I lost faith earlier this season in the line and staff. They'll have to prove that they can get it done before I believe it. The next 2 games could help.
I think that enough of what we've seen is explainable by context.

As for OL coaching ... the same shit that folks are saying about Barnett is the same stuff folks said about Reese Morgan after Philbin left.

Believe it or not ... it took Morgan a little bit to get down coaching things to the full specifications that Kirk would like ... but he got there. Kirk never threw him under the bus. Obviously, with the benefit of hindsight ... Morgan proved to not only be a gifted high school football coach ... but quite an impressive collegiate coach too.

When Brian was the OL coach ... the biggest issue was just consistent enough recruiting. We whiffed too much on our top OT prospects. Part of that was likely attributable to our brief decline due to our massive staff-turnover (given KOK's departure and Norm's retirement).

Polasek was considered an odd hire by many. Frankly, our OL blocking was a little different under him - he seemed to place a little more emphasis on guys executing man-on-man blocking ... and also having guys hold their blocks longer than I've seen us do in the past. All the same, I think that Tim ended up being pretty decent.

Now we have another guy (Barnett). Given all the OL resources at his disposal, I have little doubt in his capacity to ultimately guide our OL in the right direction. If Kirk thinks that anything smells foul or is going awry ... I'm sure that he'll make a change if necessary.
 
Are the big 10 defenses really that good or are the big 10 offenses really subpar?

Personally, I think it’s a little bit of both
I think it's the defenses. I get frustrated by the lack of team defense when I watch most teams from other conferences.
 
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Our offense is bad, but we've also played a damn gauntlet this year when it comes to defense. Statistically, we've only played two below average defenses and even those two aren't *bad*. Meanwhile, 7 of our 11 opponents are in the top 20. And Purdue is in the top 40 (out of 131).

The only really bad defense on our schedule is coming up next week. So, hopefully our offense can take advantage a little.

(These stats are incomplete because South Dakota state isn't FBS. But I think it's fair to say they'd be an above average FBS defense, at least.)

1. Michigan
2. Illinois
7. Ohio State
8. Minnesota
10. Iowa State
14. Wisconsin
20. Rutgers
37. Purdue
82. Northwestern
89. Nevada
112. Nebraska

(Out of 131)
Besides the Ohio St. offense and Michigan’s Oline. This league is bad offense. Awful quite frankly. Not hard to play good defense in this league.
 
Besides the Ohio St. offense and Michigan’s Oline. This league is bad offense. Awful quite frankly. Not hard to play good defense in this league.
Maryland is pretty good on offense while Penn St & Purdue are decent as well. Also it is looking less like Michigan has a good Oline and more Corum has good vision/cutting ability because without him they look bad. Contrast that to OSU down to only 1 scholarship, true freshman RB and they still looked very good vs Maryland.
 
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