Objectivness
- Thread starter TitanClone
- Start date
Felt like fools gold all year. We had a 7-5 roster that got all the breaks and a favorable schedule. It was the complete opposite of 2021 where we had a 10-2 team and finished 7-5.
With the way the Big 12 is setup now, there will be a very small margin between teams that go 7-2 and those that go 4-5.
With the way the Big 12 is setup now, there will be a very small margin between teams that go 7-2 and those that go 4-5.
Did anyone else notice that asu had almost all seniors playing, except for their quarterback. While we had sophomores and freshman playing predominately.
Literally big brother vs little brother.
Literally big brother vs little brother.
Very good point here. I don't think switching scheme is all that sustainable if ISU didn't recruit to a 4 man front (although maybe at least worth looking at and maybe they did and couldn't find the right pieces available) but the game really has changed from the constant hurry up to what seems like more ball control.
Agree with most of this other than the OC part. I thought this was mostly pretty solid this year. Our RBs averaged nearly 5 YPC and we had two 1,000 yard receivers. Finally opened things up and took some shots downfield. Top TE talent being out really hurt. I’d take this play calling over most prior years.
Now do SMU, Clemson, Penn state, Boise. Lol, you mention Illinois as playoff caliber but not k state. Kstate was higher in the CFP until the last week.
So basically what you are saying is we played the typical schedule our women’s basketball would. Rack up wins against poor teams, make the tourney and then lose quickly.
Somewhat true…his play calling at times was very good and aggressive. Other times was maddening with (using others terms) getting too cute and at times too conservative. Like the team there was a lack of consistency that creates an offensive identity. BTW…we averaged 4.1 ypc. Season averages are rarely a good measuring stick if you know certain games severely padded them.
I really see it as we have no choice but to move away from our base defense and either bring another LB in the box or things are not going to change. D lineman is the hardest player to recruit too, there just are not many large human beings that can move quickly and most tend to live in the Southern part of the US, not in Iowa. So you really have to invest in getting Midwest kids that have the size or will grow into the size, and put weight on them and hope they develop. EIU has really done a nice job of getting 3 star kids and developing them along their defensive line and we need to start doing the same thing.
We went to the 3-3 because our Dline was very thin. It allowed us to put more backers and strong safeties out there which is our strength.
Yesterday that but us. When our Dline made contact with Skatt he went down and didn’t break big runs. When our backers filled the hole they stopped him(this didn’t happen much). Their Oline routinely overloaded one side of our D and it out Skatt one on one with our safeties and corners a lot. That was where they got their offense.
We went to this defense because we were dealing with spread offenses and this allowed us to put our best players on the field. But the offense this defense was designed to stop is no longer being ran by most of the league and in college football. The league has changed more to a power running game, pulling and pinning with their lineman, and having 5 DBs really is not meant to stop that type of offense.
It just seems like our defense is more of reacting and not attacking the offense, while teams like ASU are doing the opposite. They are in zone, dropping LBers back into coverage one play, and then blitzing them the next. Their 4 down lineman are getting pressure on the QB or at least not allowing him to scan the field and take a coffee break back there like we allow them to do.
We only have to look over to the east to see the fix, EIU made a living off stopping running heavy offensives with poor QB play by bringing in 4 down lineman and 3 run stuffing LBers, worked well, then the league went to more of a passing/spread attack and their defense struggled with those teams because they were forced to move their run stopping LB out on a WR or slot and they just could not keep up. The solution was to move to a 4-2 defense with a hybrid type LB that could play the pass and also was big enough to come down for run support. Freyler would have excelled in that type of package. This defense was not built to play the teams we are facing now for the most part in the league and we either change it up or the results will stay the same. More 4 d line packages or switch over to a 3/4 defense with another LB in the game and go to more zone packages on the back end.
That loss was so bad it made us look like we overachieved this season.
With a three man front, those guys aren't making any tackles. They're too busy forcing themselves into 2-on-1s to keep the linebackers from being blocked. We had the horses up front for the scheme to work. We didn't have the linebackers. It was on FULL display yesterday because the guys were in position to make the tackles. they just couldn't do it.
Moving to a 4-man front would allow run-stuffing DT to make some plays. I asked in a couple of threads halfway through the season why we hadn't already done that, but it didn't get much traction. I am personally perplexed. I said it before, but here it is again- Coach Heacock installed a completely new scheme over the course of an idle week when we adopted the 3-3 front. It was done because his best players weren't on the field because of scheme. This year, once again, our best players weren't on the field because of scheme.
So yes, scheme had something to do with why our defense was weak, but only so much as it prevented us from putting our best players (the D line) on the field.
Bolded: I used to think this but ISU was playing around with the 3-3-5 a bit prior to that and had a few series with it against Texas in the Jacob Park game.
You were successful in making me smile. When I played small-town HS football nearly fifty years ago, I was a fearsome 140 pound defensive end in a standard 4-3-4. It was my job to set the edge and turn that play back inside so the LB could make the tackle. I'm not sure who's to set the edge in the ISU 3-3-5 configuration, as we seem to give it up freely!
A defensive highlight yesterday was when Miles Purchase came from nowhere to blow up the ASU QB when I thought they had successfully gone wide.
There’s 130+ FBS teams and 67 P4 teams. We’re a top 25 team, so a top 20% team in college football and roughly a top 33% team in the P4.
We’re good, but not great, and historically that is a very successful season for ISU.
We’re good, but not great, and historically that is a very successful season for ISU.
