On to the Purple Kittens Thread

[Malty Flannel]

I feel good about ISU at home under the lights. I do not believe there is more talent on the KSU roster than there is on ISU's. Campbell will have this team disciplined and focused, which hopefully means lots of the mistakes are cleaned up. But terrified to kick field goals

 

[CascadeClone]

Tulane won in Manhattan with great defense and special teams play. WRT ISU, I feel confident about one of those things...

ST just has to be boring - no mistakes. Please find some touchbacks and keep it out of speedy returner's hands.

Offense, just has to run a decent amount of plays, get first downs, and find a way to put up 21 points. Hate to say it, but don't be afraid to run it up the gut on 3rd and 8, and be willing to play punt and field position.

It's a winnable game, but also a losable game. That's every game the rest of this year. Play tough guys.

 

[cytor]

Dawn Davenport... for reference purposes.

Would.

 

[cygrads]

Turnover margin of -2 would be tough to overcome obviously. I'm looking for Dekkers to improve this week.

When was the last time playing against a P5 team when we didn't have a TO or won the TO battle?

 

[ZRF]

I feel good about ISU at home under the lights. I do not believe there is more talent on the KSU roster than there is on ISU's. Campbell will have this team disciplined and focused, which hopefully means lots of the mistakes are cleaned up. But terrified to kick field goals

Talent isn't the problem (maybe on offensive line it is).

The problem is we are one of the worst teams schematically on offense in college football. Our offensive line splits are too narrow and, without the aide of extra blocks/chips, they are unable to run or pass block against teams with decent 4 man fronts. Compounding the issue is our offensive coordinator is clueless in devising plays with savvy route design. Teams KNOW we run routes/plays the line can't block for and tee off on Dekkers. The last two weeks Baylor and KU angled their ends directly at Dekkers/the pocket. When Dekkers needed to throw there was nowhere FO HIM TO THROW. You'd think we would have realized this after Baylor, change some plays and/or blocking schemes, and give the offensive a little bit more of a chance for success. But they didn't.

Dekkers hasn't been perfect. He needs to recognize when pressure is coming at times and be more decisive in gettting rid of the ball (throwing it away). But it's hard to fault a first year starter when he's routinely being pressured in 2 seconds or less. Even more so when you watch the replays/tape and see the routes our guys are running.

I'm not sure we would have beat Baylor, but I think the on field play would have been a lot closer if we had someone more competent than manning calling plays. Last week would have been a win for sure.

I appreciate loyalty in life but Campbell isn't making millions to be loyal to coaches who aren't performing. Manning should firmly be on he chopping block.

 

[ZRF]

Turnover margin of -2 would be tough to overcome obviously. I'm looking for Dekkers to improve this week.

Not going to happen unless we make changes to the playing calling and blocking scheme. KSUs defensive ends will have a field day taking direct angles at Dekkers.

 

[JM4CY]

 

[throwittoblythe]

I'm done with expectations for this team. I bought into the hype and it was clearly just that, hype. We won a few early games which got us all excited about a special season. We can still have a good year if we fix our issues. For now, I'll enjoy the game but have no expectation that we'll win or lose. Hopefully, it's entertaining.

 

[stewart092284]

I don't have a good feeling


I trust the defense to be good.
I trust the passing game to hit a few big passes to X and Noel at times.

But over the course of the game ? IDK. I think it'll be a close game - a hard fought game - but its impossible for me to feel confident about any game right now with how anemic we are on offense. ST are ST, but the offense just looks bad overall right now in every facet. Yeah, the completion percentage and yards are nice but they're mostly short throws and in a sense extensions of the run game.

The issue with that is that its really hard to do that for 8-10, 12 plays in a row for 4 quarters against good teams and execute at a high enough level to win as we are currently seeing. But until it seems we're going to stop beating our head against a brick wall - IDK.

Without Breece's ability to break a huge play - I just feel like things are in a not great place offensively and since ST aren't great - its hard to feel super confident.

My heart wants to say Iowa State wins 17-13.
My eyes are saying K-State wins.
Hope the heart is in the right on this one

 

[surly]

ISU better fix their special teams or it will cost them Saturday. Last year, CMC didn't kick the ball anywhere near a returner in what turned out to be a beat down. Good tactics.

 

[Cyclonepride]

I'm done with expectations for this team. I bought into the hype and it was clearly just that, hype. We won a few early games which got us all excited about a special season. We can still have a good year if we fix our issues. For now, I'll enjoy the game but have no expectation that we'll win or lose. Hopefully, it's entertaining.

I went into the season thinking that we could go 9-3 or 6-6 depending on how things fell, and I feel like that was a reasonable expectation, and I haven't really changed it, but yeah, I'm just enjoying watching the games too.

 

[Darius Bieber]

When was the last time playing against a P5 team when we didn't have a TO or won the TO battle?

That would be last years' throbbing at home against TCU, 48-14. No turnovers for Iowa State, and we got one interception.

 

[Jer]

I’ve said on here probably 1,000 times over the past 15 years that this place overacts to wins and overacts to losses more than I ever could have imagined possible. Hype going into every season is always way overboard, any single win increases expectations exponentially too much, and any single loss becomes a lightning rod of negativity like the world is ending. Most teams have some of that, but it’s really glaring here with the small market, lack of other focal points in the offseason, rising expectations, etc.

I do think it’s easy to forget we have a lot of youth, and it’s also easy to forget we just graduated many of our best football players in program history. That should have set expectations quite a bit lower this year than many wanted to admit, but some of us had accounted for. Dekkers had sky high expectations for what is basically his first real action. He showed glimpses last year and could develop into a great QB, but never should have had the pressure and hype this early. Likewise, too much hype was built up on our O-line and non-X receivers.

On the flip side, while our recruiting has never been better, it’s still struggling in many ways. You could make an argument that the level of success we’ve had over the past few years could have justified a bigger boost to recruiting than we’ve seen. That will continue to create talent and depth issues that keep our margin for error small. Hopefully, we continue to see that gradually improve.

I don’t know I could sit here and say anybody is wrong for picking ISU to win in a blowout or KSU to win in a blowout. The fact of the matter is that we’ve probably never known less about a team after 5 games than we do about ISU this year. There are obvious concerns and some bright spots as well. I don’t think it’s fair to say we can’t win another game this season or is it safe to assume that we will somehow become world beaters when we haven’t seen a lot of growth yet.

With that said, I do think the KSU game will tell us if we should expect much different through the back half of the schedule. Because we’ve seen a lot of the same struggles in both our wins and losses, it’s probably fair to say that a lot of the coachable and motivation factors should be corrected by now. If not, we probably know what to expect the remainder of the season. If we see progress, there is hope we could continue to be competitive here on out. Regardless, our Defense will keep us in many games.

 

[JM4CY]

I went into the season thinking that we could go 9-3 or 6-6 depending on how things fell, and I feel like that was a reasonable expectation, and I haven't really changed it, but yeah, I'm just enjoying watching the games too.

I feel like 6-6 is the floor still. It would feel like there was major missed opportunities but I expect 3 wins somewhere in there.

7-5 and another memphis trip would be ok but certainly not great. So many things are left to shake out.

Anything above 7 that is complete and unexpected gravy and the hype train for next year will spin out of control.

 

[CoachHines3]

I feel like 6-6 is the floor still. It would feel like there was major missed opportunities but I expect 3 wins somewhere in there.

7-5 and another memphis trip would be ok but certainly not great. So many things are left to shake out.

Anything above 7 that is complete and unexpected gravy and the hype train for next year will spin out of control.

starting a petition to get the big 12 out of the liberty bowl and into the music city bowl

Nashville > Memphis

 

[cyclones500]

I’ve said on here probably 1,000 times over the past 15 years that this place overacts to wins and overacts to losses more than I ever could have imagined possible. Hype going into every season is always way overboard, any single win increases expectations exponentially too much, and any single loss becomes a lightning rod of negativity like the world is ending. Most teams have some of that, but it’s really glaring here with the small market, lack of other focal points in the offseason, rising expectations, etc.

I do think it’s easy to forget we have a lot of youth, and it’s also easy to forget we just graduated many of our best football players in program history. That should have set expectations quite a bit lower this year than many wanted to admit, but some of us had accounted for. Dekkers had sky high expectations for what is basically his first real action. He showed glimpses last year and could develop into a great QB, but never should have had the pressure and hype this early. Likewise, too much hype was built up on our O-line and non-X receivers.

On the flip side, while our recruiting has never been better, it’s still struggling in many ways. You could make an argument that the level of success we’ve had over the past few years could have justified a bigger boost to recruiting than we’ve seen. That will continue to create talent and depth issues that keep our margin for error small. Hopefully, we continue to see that gradually improve.

I don’t know I could sit here and say anybody is wrong for picking ISU to win in a blowout or KSU to win in a blowout. The fact of the matter is that we’ve probably never known less about a team after 5 games than we do about ISU this year. There are obvious concerns and some bright spots as well. I don’t think it’s fair to say we can’t win another game this season or is it safe to assume that we will somehow become world beaters when we haven’t seen a lot of growth yet.

With that said, I do think the KSU game will tell us if we should expect much different through the back half of the schedule. Because we’ve seen a lot of the same struggles in both our wins and losses, it’s probably fair to say that a lot of the coachable and motivation factors should be corrected by now. If not, we probably know what to expect the remainder of the season. If we see progress, there is hope we could continue to be competitive here on out. Regardless, our Defense will keep us in many games.

Now you're just overreacting.

That's a level-headed assessment and largely accurate. It's easy to get bogged immediately after frustrating losses ... a few days after and it settles back a little bit (for most of us).

Opposite of that, we gota positive (or, to me, more like relief) to finally get past Iowa even if it was ugly and could've gone the wrong way with just one additional bad bounce. Not like ISU dominated across the board, and Iowa clearly is not a world-beater this season. Maybe when it happened it was natural to think we finally got through that hurdle for a change, so we'd have a leg up. Then of course expectation of entire league pecking-order became chaotic so now who knows.

My basic sense is we'll have to fight tooth-and-nail for nearly any win this season. Might be football parallel to MBB 2021-22. Maybe there will be an uptick as the season progresses, but it does test fan patience if we stumble along to a 3-4 start before getting back over the hump.

 

[throwittoblythe]

I went into the season thinking that we could go 9-3 or 6-6 depending on how things fell, and I feel like that was a reasonable expectation, and I haven't really changed it, but yeah, I'm just enjoying watching the games too.

I was around 7-5, but the early talk got me excited about something special. No shade thrown here, but it had a lot to do with the Iowa Everywhere podcasts. I heard things like:

"Reeder is Mike Rose 2.0"
"Deepest running back group in the Campbell Era"
"Talent across the board is better than even last year"
"10-2 with a Big XII championship is within range"

Again, not throwing shade at any of those podcasts because I love them. Just a good reminder to me to step back and temper those expectations when you have a team that's young and unproven.

 

[Cyclonepride]

I was around 7-5, but the early talk got me excited about something special. No shade thrown here, but it had a lot to do with the Iowa Everywhere podcasts. I heard things like:

"Reeder is Mike Rose 2.0"
"Deepest running back group in the Campbell Era"
"Talent across the board is better than even last year"
"10-2 with a Big XII championship is within range"

Again, not throwing shade at any of those podcasts because I love them. Just a good reminder to me to step back and temper those expectations when you have a team that's young and unproven.

Yeah, I think we all forget that "talent better across the board" doesn't always make up for less experience in key areas.

 

[SolarGarlic]

I was around 7-5, but the early talk got me excited about something special. No shade thrown here, but it had a lot to do with the Iowa Everywhere podcasts. I heard things like:

"Reeder is Mike Rose 2.0"
"Deepest running back group in the Campbell Era"
"Talent across the board is better than even last year"
"10-2 with a Big XII championship is within range"

Again, not throwing shade at any of those podcasts because I love them. Just a good reminder to me to step back and temper those expectations when you have a team that's young and unproven.

CW doesn't have much info on the team. He hears/creates the same hype we do. It's an endless circle.

For example, on the Hassel pod yesterday, CW said, "nobody knows this, but we hired a special teams analyst from the Rams."

A lot of fans knew about this, and it was written about in May by the Des Moines Register, Cedar Rapids Gazette, 247, and....Cyclone Fanatic.

Once you're around this stuff long enough, you learn to take what insiders have to say with a grain of salt.

 

[CYEATHAWK]

our Defense will keep us in many games.

Unless the defense it much better this year, like last seasons games against WVU and Tech ......I figure the defense will get boat raced 2 times in the next 7 games. I don't know who will do it, but like false starts in the red zone.....I'm counting on it.