I was hopeful early on we would get to 6-7 wins and bowl eligibility this, year, but upon further review I think 5 is the more likely target with 4 not being a disappointment. Why my downward revision after an opening win? Not because of coaching. I am very pleased by what I saw on both sides of the ball. We are a fundamentally sound football team with explosive potential on offense. For the first time since I have sat in the seats of JTS, win or lose, watching the game I really felt like our guys were well coached. Even in the peak of DMac's years which I greatly enjoyed, I didn't often feel we were as well coached as we could be, but lets not make this about the past shall we. What concerns me now is that I don't believe we have the horses in the two deeps in the front seven on defense to be effective regardless of how well coached we are. Players can be the best tacklers, and know where to be on every play against every formation, but if you don't have the physical skills necessary to execute it isn't going to be pretty and that is what I am seeing. I don't think I can say with confidence that any of our front seven would definitely be a starter for any other team in the Big 12. We just don't have the guys up front defensively that we need right now. Unfortunately this is likely a minimum 3 year problem. If you do a great job recruiting those positions this year and next year you, throw in a redshirt year and a year of learning to play in Big 12, you are looking at 3 years before we have the guys we need on the field, (assuming no recruiting misses). Juco's can speed that up, but I am not seeing any guys that we are in on yet that are sure fire impact guys in the front seven, and even then it has taken a year for most to be productive. So I am going to try to learn patience and enjoy the offense, appreciate the effort from the players and coaches on defense and enjoy the games regardless. Do you think we have the guys in the front seven that are what we need to compete? Who do you think we have in the front seven who would start on any or all teams in the B12?
Just remember that the most improvement a teams makes is from week 1 to week 2. That along with ISU getting 2 additional days of practice because of their Thursday night game makes me confident in HC Rhoads and DC Burnham to improve this area of opportunity.
I agree for the most part. I don't think that it necessarily has to take 3 years to make big strides in that area, but only time will tell. I think our LB's are pretty capable (could use some more speed), but our front 4 are probably not on par with the rest of the Big XII. No matter how good our LB's and DB's are, if the front 4 can't consistently stop the run or put pressure on the QB, we're going to see this defense give up a lot of yards and points.
A long week in between games makes it tough to avoid some amount analysis before the proper amount of data is available. I think everything you said is pretty fair. That said, the DL looked a lot better at the end of the game than they did early. Hopefully someone in the front 7 (aside from Jesse Smith) begins to stand out. Frere, Parker and Raven being the senior leaders seem the most likely, but that won't help us beyond this season. Right now I'm not seeing an underclassman there that's going to distinguish the unit the way a Jason Berryman or a Brent Curvey did. For as questionable as our front seven is this season, next season could be worse with the seniors leaving.
After seeing KSU and Colorado highlights my hopes of winning those two games actually improved. Still thinking 6 wins.
This is one of those old football cliches. I don't know if it is accurate or not, but for ISU's sake, I really hope it is. After two more games, we should be able to make a pretty accurate assessment of a final win total. Over the next two (maybe three) games, we should get some answers to a few key questions from the NDSU game over which there has been much speculation: 1a) On offense, is ISU going to consistently get deeper receivers open? 1b) Is Arnaud going to see them if they do get open? 1c) Are the recievers going to put away the dropsies and make catches? 2) NDSU's offense was handling ISU's defense for a good part of the game. Did NDSU's offense get tired at the end of the game, or did ISU's defense simply rise to occasion and take control of those last NDSU possessions?
For ISU to get to six wins, the Iowa game is almost a must-win. I say that because I have a hard time finding more than six games where we have decent shot. Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri are the best teams in the North and we play them all on the road. Count those as probable losses. Oklahoma State at home is a probable loss. Texas A&M on the road and Baylor at home will be very tough to win. Both those teams look quite a bit better than us, at least at this point. Heck, Baylor might be the second best team we play at home this year. That leaves Iowa, Kent State, Army, Kansas State, and Colorado as the only games where I think we have a reasonable shot to win. If we lose more than one of those games, bowl hopes are over. Lose just one and it will still be tough. Beating Iowa this week keeps alive the possibility that we start 5-0. It would be a very week 5-0, but I have a hard time believing we would lose all seven of our remaining games.
Yes d-line is a concern I wanted to see more out of C.Lyle. Maybe we will in a full drop back passing. The problem w/ the improvement frm week1 to week2 is so does everyother team? Right?
I said 5-7 before the year and I will have to scale it back to 4-8. The Kent St game is the big game IMO
Both. ISU was clearly the more well conditioned team, and NDSU was running out of juice. This is good because, many Hawk fans I talked too since saturday lamented about how out of shape the Hawks seemed. Also, the defense was playing better, along w/some good play calling by Wally B. There were some decent blitzes that got home in the 2nd half, particularly one by Ter'ran Benton from the corner spot.
This isn't just in reference to you, but to everyone as a whole. How come the teams that we play that are probable losses are just counted as Ls and teams that we could or should beat (like Army, Kent State, Kansas State, Baylor, Colorado, Texas A&M) are just maybe Ws? Upsets go both ways. If Kent State can beat us, we can beat Baylor. Nothing special about the underdogs we play against versus the favorites we play against where we are underdogs.
It's because we haven't won a Big 12 game since 2007, haven't won a road game since 2005, and are 10-27 since the start of the 2006 season. It's a whole lot easier to predict a sure loss than it is to predict a sure win. That said, the last three years we have been competitive with one conference team at home that everyone thought we would lose to: Missouri in 2006 (win), Oklahoma in 2007 (loss), and Kansas last year (loss). The two candidates for that kind of game this year are Baylor and Oklahoma State. We'll see what happens.
