Jirehl Brock status?

wintersmd

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All Iowa has to do to beat ISU every year is not make any mistakes. They could literally not throw a pass and still win because ISU will almost always find a way to hand it to them.
And we tried like hell to give it away last year. Iowa just didn't take it.
 
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CySmurf

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Yeah, didn't we have 2 punts blocked, one of which set up an easy touchdown (their only score on the day)? I feel like the best thing to come out of last season was Campbell getting that annoying Cy-Hawk monkey off his back.
We looked so god awful winning that game though...that's how bad Iowa's offense was.
 

SEIOWA CLONE

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Brock was rated higher. Some services even had Hall as a 2 star.
Hall had flown under the radar on the recruiting trail while Brock was making headlines. The Athletic had a story a few years back how Hall was found on film by one of the ISU coaches, and he reminded him Kareem Hunt that the staff had in Toledo and also was under the radar.
 

besserheimerphat

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Guessing we are picked last by every publication and probably rightfully so. First off we sucked last year. Second we lost a lot of skill positions do to graduation and gambling. I have a sneaky suspicion this year is going to be aweful football wise and we will all be ready for basketball.
The two analytics I look at, SP+ and FEI, both had ISU ranked in the 50s most of last year. Clearly that's not good, but I wouldn't call it "suck" either. We were in the neighborhood of average, and we had bad breaks that resulted in us going like 1-5 in one score games. Hopefully we bounce back from that a bit. But losing all that experience isn't great.
 

cayin

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Come on lol. No one had Breece as a 2 star. He was 135th overall and the 7th ranked running back on 247. He was our highest ranked recruit per 247.

during the recruiting process, yes Hall was underlooked, under-recruited and ranked lower. The whole time Brock and Breece were committed, Brock was more highly regarded. Breece was indeed a 2 star, not by everyone, but some services. He did end up as a 4 star, but not by everyone. Rivals for example, elevated him to a 3 star. I answered in the context as to who was more highly thought of throughout the recruiting process, mostly from the fan excitement on the message boards.
 

JM4CY

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The two analytics I look at, SP+ and FEI, both had ISU ranked in the 50s most of last year. Clearly that's not good, but I wouldn't call it "suck" either. We were in the neighborhood of average, and we had bad breaks that resulted in us going like 1-5 in one score games. Hopefully we bounce back from that a bit. But losing all that experience isn't great.
Respectfully, the point of an offense is to score points. You cannot honestly watch whatever the hell we called our “offense” last year and say that that team was in the “neighborhood of average”.
 
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mitchforcy

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during the recruiting process, yes Hall was underlooked, under-recruited and ranked lower. The whole time Brock and Breece were committed, Brock was more highly regarded. Breece was indeed a 2 star, not by everyone, but some services. He did end up as a 4 star, but not by everyone. Rivals for example, elevated him to a 3 star. I answered in the context as to who was more highly thought of throughout the recruiting process, mostly from the fan excitement on the message boards.
I wouldn’t say that anyone with a Michigan offer is under looked.
 

Jer

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Respectfully, the point of an offense is to score points. You cannot honestly watch whatever the hell we called our “offense” last year and say that that team was in the “neighborhood of average”.
In a way, our offensive identity has been "bend, don't score" instead of "bend, don't break" defense. We could move the ball - the reason why some pointed to Manning's offenses as being historically good for us. We just had no ******* idea how to do anything once we hit the 20 yard line.

Defenses have known for years that they could let us move the ball between the 20s, and we had beast backs and a stud receiver each year to do it. They also knew we would do nothing with it as they ratched up the defense in the red zone.
 

JM4CY

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In a way, our offensive identity has been "bend, don't score" instead of "bend, don't break" defense. We could move the ball - the reason why some pointed to Manning's offenses as being historically good for us. We just had no ******* idea how to do anything once we hit the 20 yard line.
Throw in the really special “special teams” and you cannot tell me that team was close to average.
 

Jer

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So back on topic.

Jirehl to me is a very complex story. He went from inspirational - coming in with another highly touted back to be a 1 - 2 punch, biding his time to be the featured back and star for a team on the rise. Unfortunately, he got hurt early in the season and then gambled away his future.

In a way, it sounds more like an NFL story arc where a promising player battles setbacks and adversity, only to then piss away his chances.
 

besserheimerphat

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Respectfully, the point of an offense is to score points. You cannot honestly watch whatever the hell we called our “offense” last year and say that that team was in the “neighborhood of average”.
The TEAM was about average overall. The defense was above average about as much as the offense was below average. Miami, NC State and Iowa all had worse offenses than we did and yet finished with better records. If you look at the teams around us, we are the outlier with a bad record. Some of that is due to SOS (ACC and B1GW have joined the chat) and some of that is due to luck. And I would assume SOS and luck are correlated. Kansas and Okie State both finished the year ranked lower than us in the team analytics, but finished with better records. And we all played equivalent schedules.
 
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RezClone

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The two analytics I look at, SP+ and FEI, both had ISU ranked in the 50s most of last year. Clearly that's not good, but I wouldn't call it "suck" either. We were in the neighborhood of average, and we had bad breaks that resulted in us going like 1-5 in one score games. Hopefully we bounce back from that a bit. But losing all that experience isn't great.
In general, the metrics are kind to ISU under Campbell.

Vegas too. In particular ISU has done better than you might think in yards per play on both sides of the ball, at least before last year, which is what they really look at.

Ironically, Vegas minimizes things that Campbell would consider 'winning in the margins'. These includes things critical to winning games like Turnover margin, red zone%, and to some degree even penalty yards and special teams.

Why? Vegas considers those flukey statistics that tend to even out over time, thus making their likelihood hard to quantify going forward and not good indicators of how good a team is at football 'pound for pound', so to speak.

Modern advanced metrics tend to work in a similar fashion because they are trying to evaluate teams on a deeper substantive level than you'd get with traditional means that use surface level stats like W-L record, Points scored/allowed, etc. that are easier to skew based on outliers such as "luck", volume, opportunity, etc.

What does this mean for ISU? We tend to be really bad at getting lucky. Probably not a big shocker to anyone here. What might be a bit of a hot take is is ISU is actually kind an inverse football team from the coach speak we get all the time.

We have consistently built quailty rosters of talented guys who can square up pound for pound with most teams we play, but we haven't done the little things well consistently enough to have a whole lot to show for it.
 

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