Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Breaking down an Iowa Hawkeye loss to Wisconsin with LeShun Daniels Jr

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

The Iowa Hawkeyes suffered a devastating blow to their Big Ten Championship game chances by falling to Wisconsin in Madison yesterday. I am joined by former Iowa running back LeShun Daniels Jr to break down the game. What went wrong on the offensive line and how big of an adjustment is it to play a 3-4 defense. Is Spencer Petras the answer at quarterback or should we be giving a longer look to Alex Padilla, and what is going on with the wide receiver group. Tyrone Tracy Jr, Keagan Johnson, and others are covered in this recap.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.PrizePicksDon’t hesitate, check out PrizePicks.com and use promo code: “LOCKEDON” or go to your app store and download the app today. PrizePicks is daily fantasy made easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are Locked on Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back Hawkeye Nation to another episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Podcast Network. As we do after every single Iowa game, win or lose, though, we are joined by former Iowa running back LaShawn Daniels. As always, myself, I'm Andrew Wade, and we are here to break down what went wrong in yesterday's game. It was an ugly game, to say the least.

But before we get into that, I want to thank you all for making the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast your first listen every single day. You can find the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast for free Monday through Friday, wherever you get podcasts at, and also on YouTube as well by searching Locked On Hawkeyes. LaShawn, before we get into this disastrous game, how are you, man? How are you personally doing? How is your life going? High school football is over, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, personally, I mean, I'm doing well, doing well. I mean, again, we didn't have, coaching-wise, we didn't have the type of season that we were looking for, but we did finish strong in our last couple games of the year, which was nice.

And, you know, I was able to coach some good running backs this year, which was fun as well. But, I mean, no, I mean, we're doing well personally. Obviously, I've done better after Hawkeye games before, but no, we're doing all right. We're doing all right. And it's part of the job, man. I wish we could talk about an Iowa win every single time, but there are going to be losses. There's only one time in the last 30 years that Iowa has went undefeated

in regular season play, so there was bound to be a loss or two. I personally didn't think it was going to be like this. I thought we would at least be competitive in these games so that's kind of frustrating um you have some fun stuff today right you're going to the bears game though bears playing at 11 versus the 49ers yeah yep yep they'll be playing the niners unfortunately uh george isn't going to be playing and cj obviously doesn't play for the niners anymore uh but no i mean it'll still be a good time get to watch james play um anytime i can watch james play it be a good time to get to watch James play.

Anytime I can watch James play, it's a good time. Awesome, man. Well, sounds like you have some good stuff going on today. Hopefully the Bears can get on track and get a W as well. But that'll be an interesting situation nonetheless. So let's get into it, though. That was just a terrible game. I mean, I think we all saw it.

Wisconsin got up to a 20-0 lead on Iowa. The first drive that Wisconsin drove down the field can be kind of expected, right? I mean, when we see Phil Parker's defense, typically teams have a good drive in the first quarter. It's kind of like clockwork. And then the defense buckles up, they settle down, and they slow down that offense. and that's exactly what they did they they stopped wisconsin several times they forced wisconsin into field goals several times despite having their backs against the wall due

to really poor field position uh given up by iowa um did you have any takeaways from the performance of the defense in this game um yeah i mean mean, the defense, I thought played a great game. I think they played more than well enough for us to be competitive and actually win that football game. I thought they were doing a great job with the cars that they were dealt. I mean, you know, being on short field, every single drive, I mean, it's tough to win a football game like that., it's tough to win a football game like that. It's very tough to win a football game like that. But, I mean, there were times where the defense buckled down, you know, either held them to the field goal or even had that goal line stand, which was fantastic.

But, yeah, I mean, I thought the defense, you know, played extremely well. I mean, they gave up, what, I think i was thinking was like what 270 yards of total offense right um and you know they held them uh most of the most of the time um so yeah just got to give the defense plenty of credit uh for going out there and actually deciding to play some football and um you know be competitive um and try to take it to Wisconsin. Yeah, you mentioned playing well. They only allowed 104 passing yards to Graham Mertz, which is actually a decent day for Graham Mertz,

considering how bad he has been. But 11 of 22 passing, considering you're missing two of your cornerbacks, that's pretty solid. Wisconsin rushing 48 attempts, 166 yards, a 3.5 yard per carry average. Chaz Chesma Lucy, 19 carries, 48 yards, 2.5 yard per carry average. That's way better than what Purdue did. I mean, we did exactly what we need to do from a defensive perspective. As you said, we held them to a very relatively poor offensive showing.

We didn't let them run the ball the way they wanted to run the ball consistently throughout the game. They did early on target Jamari Harris. So I think it's important to note Riley Moss out. Terry Roberts was a late scratch as well. Sounds like that was something that was being kind of on the rumor mill for a couple of days. I heard about it, I think, on Wednesday, I believe.

I wasn't sure what was happening. Obviously, we weren't going to hear anything from the coaches. Jamari Harris gets his first start in this game. They kind of picked on him a little bit early on, but overall, I thought he settled down and played really well. My question to you is, from an offensive perspective, when the other unit is not performing well, does that piss you off? Because the defense played a good enough game to win that ball game

and the offense just couldn't get it done does that make you mad if you were on the flip side of that uh you know obviously it's really really frustrating like extremely frustrating um from a player standpoint because it's like um i mean i'm just thinking like as a defensive player i mean heck you guys get a stop um you know you're off the field for a minute and a half and next thing you know you're back up uh it can be very very frustrating because it feels like like you know it's just the other side is not getting done but you know what that's football so like you kind of know like hey like we have to do our job on this side as much as possible right to make it easier for the other side um and i know you know being in iowa we never had it wasn't too often that the offense was on that side um but

still it was still something that is you know expected right when the one unit isn't doing so hot um the other unit is supposed to help pick us up um you know as much as possible um you know, expected, right? When the one unit isn't doing so hot, the other unit is supposed to help pick us up, you know, as much as possible. You know, unfortunately, you know, our offense hasn't been able to do that the last couple games, so. Yeah, it's tough. When Iowa was down 10-0,

we fumbled the football within three plays. We stopped Wisconsin at the goal line. We turn right back around. And I don't know. We're going to have to break down that handoff here in a second. Ivory Kelly Martin fumbles the football at the one yard line or the two yard line, excuse me. Wisconsin goes in for a touchdown.

We get the ball back. We do nothing with it. We punt the ball. Wisconsin puts the ball back to us. And then we muff the punt. i mean that now that's tough fielding punts is not necessarily easy we had our backup punt returner in there um but max cooper is a fifth year senior uh you gotta be able to get it done ivory kelly martin is an older guy as well. I mean, these are veteran players. These are not young freshmen in their very first moment playing collegiate football. Can you walk through what happened on that handoff between Spencer and Ivory?

It looked like Ivory just didn't realize the ball was going to be there. Yeah, I don't know what it was. I mean, I know the announcers had mentioned something like he just didn't get it cleanly, which I mean, I thought I mean, I thought Spencer put it in the pocket. I couldn't tell from the angle that they showed. I mean, he must just not have just grabbed the football, which is what I'm thinking. Like, I mean, there's literally other like no other explanation for it. no other explanation for it. I mean, it looked like Spencer put it, you know, right in his little pocket. And Ivory either didn't just grab the football or didn't roll over the football, you know, like your typical running back technique is. And, you know, obviously it was a huge,

huge turnover and an inopportune time. So that's like what I saw from, you know, a film perspective, just watching the game on the first go around. But, yeah, I mean, it looked like it was probably Ivory's fault, even though most of the time, like, the quarterback always gives the blame for exchanges. But it looked like Ivory just didn't even grab the football. Yeah, well, Spencer gets plenty of blame most days anyway, so I think we can kind of spread that around if we need to.

It's unfortunate. I want to see Ivory Kelly Martin succeed. I think he's the kind of player who's been in the program for a while. He clearly wants to do things the right way. When everything kind of went down last summer, he was one of the guys that was being a leader in the locker room. He was the one do things the right way. When everything kind of went down last summer, he was one of the guys that was being a leader in the locker room. He was the one speaking to the media. He was trying to keep the team together.

He's been, he started out as a starter three years ago, has went through kind of the ringer of losing his job multiple times and yet still sticking it out and possibly coming back for next year's team to potentially try to be the starter again. next year's next year's team to potentially try to be the starter again um it's just it's unfortunate to see that happen i i would not that i wish that would happen on anyone else but it's just it kind of stinks to see it happen to ivory kelly martin i do want to talk about spencer because there is a controversy of brewing in hawkeye nation with this offense people want change they want something to be different and

it just hasn't been that way for the last two weeks. We're going to talk about that here in a few short moments. I do want to tell you all about PrizePix. College football fanatics, you got to listen up because PrizePix is daily fantasy made easy. I personally love this, and I know that you will too. PrizePix is a leader in college sports daily fantasy. They offer more college football props than anyone in the world, and they offer all the star players of the power fives as well as mid-major players you might not have even heard of prize picks offers any prop you can think of from yardage to touchdowns even interceptions thrown i would have loved to see i didn't get a chance to look at it but i would have loved to see

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making the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast your first listen every single day, Monday through Friday, wherever you get podcasts at and also on YouTube as well to search Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, making the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast your first listen every single day, Monday through Friday, wherever you get podcasts at, and also on YouTube as well. Just search Lockdown Hawkeyes. All right, let's get past. Hopefully my voice won't crack again. Clearly struggling there. LaShawn, we talked about the offense, talked about the fumble. We talked about putting the defense in a bad position. What we haven't talked about yet is how bad this offensive line has been and whether or not spencer petrus is the guy to lead the iowa hawkeyes um let's maybe start with the offensive line i don't want to we have plenty of time to talk about spencer we've talked about spencer literally every

show for the last gosh i don't know two seasons at this point it's uh it's become a topic that's always on the recap show this offensive line, we mentioned the fact going against that Purdue team and going into a bye week, we need to clean up some things from a technique perspective. We need to get right. These younger guys, they have a quicker, not a quicker learning curve, but a steeper learning curve, but the ability to make progress very quickly because there's so much to learn. Well, we come into this bye week.

We go up against Wisconsin, and I know Wisconsin runs a 3-4 defense. That can be difficult to account for which guy is coming where. There were several times, though, on a three-man rush where our guys didn't know who to block. It felt like more so than any week that we've seen, it was not necessarily just our guys getting overpowered, although there were several times of that. There were times where our guys just didn't block a guy.

Or I saw Mason Richmond kick out, and a guy would just go right past him. He was looking for a guy coming on the edge. No one came. Guy coming right past him. How much of that can you account to the 3-4 defense being confusing and that scheme being tough for younger guys to recognize versus I don't even know how do we account for the rest of that. That was just ugly.

Yeah, I mean, obviously you got to give credit to Wisconsin. I mean, they do a great job defensively every single year for as long as I can remember. But, you know, going against a 3-4 is more difficult because your pass protection does change slightly. Um, and the rules changed a little bit. Um, you know, whether we're doing, you know, a pocket protection, which is where the running back has weak side, um, responsibilities, or we're doing turn protection where the running back has strong side responsibilities. And it does vary.

The protections does change because now you have an extra linebacker, a guy who's standing up and one less lineman. So it does make it a little bit more difficult, especially when we have young guys in there. Right. I mean, it's not something that we go against very often. I mean, we're always practicing usually against a four, or either practicing against a four down front, or we're practicing against some type of five-man front look, right, where they got guys up, standing up, and kind of all over the place,

and not really a three-four look. But, you know, obviously a lot of it comes from, you know, having to learn from that, who to block, who our responsibilities are. comes from you know having to learn from that um who to block who our responsibilities are um but for the most part it it doesn't change too much but i can understand how it can be confusing for young football players um like our guys and you know i think that obviously contributed a lot to the game because i just feel like our guys were not playing on first off on the offensive line i haven't felt like the offensive line has played fast at all the entire year outside of Tyler.

Basically, I don't know if they've really played fast the entire year at all, really, if I'm being quite honest. I mean, it just feels like they're thinking so much out there. The wheels are spinning so fast that they're thinking of not making any mistakes. And well, and that's in turn, it's right. It's making them play a lot slower, which you obviously can't do, especially in Big Ten football play. Right. I mean, you got defensive linemen who are going to be defensive linemen, linebackers who are going to be playing on Sundays.

And, you know, if you're out there playing slow and, you know, you're thinking too much, right, that those half seconds, you know, make huge differences. Right. And then outside of that, outside of just, you know, knowing what to do, I just felt like our fundamentals aren't really there. I feel like our eyes aren't looking in the spots we're supposed to be looking. And the rotation of like eight guys is not really working i feel like at this point um and i would much rather you know obviously i'm not in the building i don't know what's going on now right but i would much rather our guys kind of um settle in on you know five guys five six guys right that they really really trust

um at this point in the time of the season and kind of just go all in with them um and just make sure that the other guys are ready right if something does happen but kind of go all in with five or six guys because again things are happening so fast in the game and when you have guys that are in a one drive and then you have another set of guys that are in the next drive yeah obviously you know coaches are seeing everything above. But I mean, the players aren't right. I mean, you see something that happens on one drive, especially a team like Wisconsin. They're going to change up looks and bring different different things. And then next drive, you have different guys in there. They didn't see what happened before.

So it's harder for them to be able to make the right adjustments, know exactly what to look for, because, again, they weren't in the football game. So that's really kind of my thoughts, you know, right now on the offensive line. And it's very frustrating because, you know, when it comes to offensive line play, you know that we're usually going to have, you know, a pretty good unit out there, a pretty consistent unit. And it's frustrating at this point in the season you know through our what was that our eighth game um and you know we don't have any consistency there yeah i mean you hit i think you hit the nail right on the head uh when you're eight games in and you're rotating eight guys

through a five man like through a five position spot i cannot say that word very correctly very well but when you're rotating eight guys through five positions eight games in there's a problem that's okay early on in the season you're trying to figure things out work things out i know there's been injuries we're eight games in people are getting healthy kyler shot i i kyler shot's an awesome player but conditioning cannot be an excuse for for two months now you've got to be able to you've got to be ready to go i know cody has been battling a few things everything we heard though is he's been practicing i i just i yeah i don't understand how your eight games and you still don't know who the starters are or who the main guys should be and if you're trying to just flip-flop guys to get some sort of positive

momentum that's a problem it is It is not going to work. It looked like Iowa might have changed up a little bit of their blocking scheme from first half to second half. They came out running the ball pretty well early on to start the second half. Did you notice that as well, or is that something I'm just making up in my head? Well, you know, we're going to make adjustments, right? We're a team who we always make adjustments no matter what, whether we're, you know, up by 40 or down by 40. We're obviously in a tight ballgame and halftime.

We're going to make adjustments. And, you know, we have there are some personal smart coaching coaches on our offensive staff. Right. So, you know, we're able to make some adjustments and we're coming out. It will come out a little bit stronger and play our little bit more of our brand of football. But I mean, still, I mean, it, it didn't really convert to too much, you know, besides the one score that we did have. But, you know, I did feel like we did come out a little bit stronger in the second half. But, you know, frankly, it just, obviously it just wasn't, wasn't enough.

Yeah. And you mentioned running the ball. Last time we chatted, we were talking about two quarterback sneaks back to back to get a first down on a fourth down play. Now we got to talk about two fullback dives. I'm very I'll be very interested to hear your answer on this based off of your initial nonverbal response here. But what are we thinking here? The quarterback sneak, I know we talked about it. I could at least justify that in my mind. The fact that the quarterback sneak has typically been successful for us. The fullback dive to a degree has been successful at times, but clearly against Wisconsin, it was not working. And actually we're getting to a little break here. So I want you to mull on that. And we're going to talk about the fullback dive when we come back. Before we get to that though,

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LaShawn, I wanted to just sit there for a second. We talked about the fullback dive. I brought it up. Let me hear from you. What are your thoughts on doing back-to-back fullback dives against a run defense that has been stopping us all day and also has been plugging the hole when we're trying to do fullback dives? Yeah. And, you know, I got to start us off.

Obviously, I love my fullbacks. Every single fullback I've ever had, you know, has done a great job from high school through college, NFL, right? job from high school through college nfl right i mean i've had great fullbacks um who go in there and when they stick your stick their head in there to you know go block guys who uh have bad intentions um and obviously you want to reward them by giving them a football sometimes right um and you know i get it right i mean we haven't very been um with all that being said though like we haven't been great on short yardage for a very long time. I mean, I feel like whenever we run traditional offense, I mean, even when I was there. Right. We weren't very great in our short yardage plays.

So and I get it right. The fullback dive is a little bit. It's very similar to a quarterback sneak in a a sense where you can essentially just you know wedge block it right and um you know have the have the ball carrier just fall forward for for a yard or two um but you know when you look at how they lined up right they once Wisconsin basically did a very they lined up very very similarly to how Purdue did a couple weeks back, you know, on the short yardage when we ran into quarterback sneaks. They lined up very similar where they had basically like four guys within, you know, both guards and the center, knowing right where we're going to run the football. And, you know, I think having adjustments is very important, which I think I like. Don't quote me on this, but I want to say when before that timeout was called, I want to say they must have had the same play called.

And it looked like Spencer was checking the football play based on their alignment, because that's how Wisconsin came up and lined up. So I'm not sure if they had checks built in or Spencer wanted to check the play, you know, to get into a better look where we could, you know, move a gap over, you know, get tired of the ball and get, you know, a little bit more off tackle. But it looked like that they had, you know, changes in there. I don't know what happened in the timeout. You know, they most obviously obviously went talked over and just said and probably just asked the guys like hey can we get this on a fullback dive and obviously you know most of the time they're just gonna say

of course our guys are gonna say yeah yeah we can get it or whatever um but you know knowing how they're lined up and knowing how much success Wisconsin's defense was having, I feel like playing into exactly what they wanted us to do was not the right way to go. Right. And I'm not again, I'm not calling plays. Right. I don't know what they saw, what they went over, you know, after the Purdue game and what they saw leading into this week but you know with knowing how our offense has been performing I feel like playing into what the defense wanted us to do and just trying to win off of hey where our guys are better than your guys own type of mentality just frankly this wasn't really the way to go. And obviously, it didn't end up turning out on our favor.

And I mean, yeah, I mean, Monty probably got a bad spot on it. But I mean, still, right? I mean, there are so many different things that we could have done in the playbook that I feel like would have been a lot more successful than trying just to play into Wisconsin's hands. I feel like would have been a lot more successful than trying just to play into Wisconsin's hands. Yeah. The way I equated it on Twitter was it felt like we were almost playing scared to try new things, to do something a little bit different. We were just trying to stick with what we always do versus thinking, you know what, we're in it. We have to we're trying to win this game. This is this is a play that decides this game. Kirk even said it in his press conference after that the game was over so why are you going out there and doing back-to-back fullback dives

give your guys a chance do something different you know how big of a well not I'm not saying you know you definitely know what I'm about to say but when you when you have a play like that and you maybe you do an end around or you do a quick you do something that's different that Wisconsin's not expecting and maybe you get a big play from that maybe you have a play like that and maybe you do an end around or you do something that's different that Wisconsin's not expecting and maybe you get a big play from that, maybe you get a touchdown, that is a huge momentum-changing play that could have completely changed the outcome of the game. I don't understand why we're not making slight changes to switch it up. It feels like every single game, it it gets to point now right i know what

we're running uh there was a play i think it's the second half against wisconsin we lined up uh we had an overloaded formation on the left side and i was like well they're running to the left what do we do we ran to the left i mean like there's just there's just not a lot of variability teams can line up and you better even everyone knows what Iowa's going to do. They've been seeing this offense. And, yes, there's been new offensive coordinators. But for the most part, a lot of the general principles have been the same. For the last 20, 23 years since Kirk Ferentz has taken over,

teams know what's going to happen, and teams know what we're going to do. And when we get up and line up and we don't change it up, it's frustrating to watch from a fan perspective. I can only imagine it's frustrating for you to watch from a player perspective. Let's talk a little bit about the quarterback position though. When an offensive line is doing as poorly as our offensive line is there's, there's a couple of ways that you can,

can try to alleviate the pressure from the offensive line, not being able to handle pass protection. You can put more guys in pass protection. You can leave running backs, tight ends to chip some guys when they're going out for the routes. You do some quick passing plays, which has been a struggle for us because our guys either aren't getting open or Spencer's not delivering it on time. Or you have a mobile quarterback who can break the pocket

and make things happen with his legs. We are very aware Spencer is literally incapable of doing that. He tried one time to scramble. I think he got three or four yards, but it looked, I'm not trying to be rude on Spencer. I've been a Spencer Homer this whole year trying to support him, but it looked like my grandpa trying to run to get a couple of yards. I mean, it was just, it was crotchety and just not really the most fluid movement I've seen. Alex Padilla comes in. He makes a play with his legs, delivers a nice pass on the sideline,

and now everyone believes that there is a quarterback controversy. I'm putting you in a tough position here because I know you don't want to ever talk badly or poorly about Iowa football players. Who would you start at this point? Would you start Spencer or Alex? Do you feel like you've seen enough from Spencer? Do you feel like we have a better shot with Alex? I mean, this is starting to remind, and before I get to that,

it's kind of starting to remind me a little bit of that controversy you probably went through when you were at Iowa where we switched quarterbacks, went from Jake to CJ. CJ had a bit more of a scrambling ability. I'm not saying Alex is CJ, but just what are your thoughts on the whole situation? Yeah. You know, as far as who I would start, I mean, it's tough, right? I mean, I'm just going off of what I see on Saturdays, right? I'm not in there. The practices, you know, I wasn't in there through this preparation throughout the week, let alone, you know, in the summer and springtime. Right. And yeah, I mean, obviously, I love the fact that our in our offensive line is still struggling and we haven't made any really made any strides throughout the year is very concerning.

And obviously a way to leave that is, you know, some of the things that you said, right. I mean, you do some chips, you do some play actions. You do things to keep the defense from putting their ears back. Right. And then obviously you got to add quick throws where, you know, a quarterback can kind of sit there, get the ball out of his hands very quickly. Right. I mean, you look at, you know, like a team, like uh you just look at tom brady's career for example right he's never been a mobile guy right i mean he just sits in the pocket he gets the ball out fast right anybody puts it where

it needs to be right and um when you do have a struggling online i mean that's kind of the recipe that has to be unfortunately um we haven't done those things right we haven't chipped nowhere near as much as i would like we don't do as much um play actions as much as i would like we don't you know do a whole bunch of different things you know from a play calling standpoint that i think would obviously help the offensive line quite a bit um and you know obviously spencer just hasn't been able to you know make the throws on time know, put the ball where it needs to be. And, you know, we have receivers that are dropping passes as well. Right. Which obviously isn't helping. So I'm personally I've always been a fan of mobile quarterbacks.

Right. I love the ability that mobile quarterbacks have and being able to extend the football play when things do break down and things don't go perfect right they're able to at least create you know with their legs right instead of you know it just being basically a jugs machine back there you know looking for for people to throw to right so um you know i again i'm always a fan of mobile quarterbacks uh right i mean i love when we made the change to to cj even though jake i gotta get this out there jake wasn't you know terrible right he obviously wasn't a bad quarterback at all and he was decently mobile right he could um you know move throughout the pocket he could convert plays with his legs um and obviously it was a good throw of the football. I mean, he left us and threw for like three thousand yards over at the Lions for a second. Yeah. And was a quarterback in the NFL for quite a bit.

So I obviously like he was a good he was a good football player. Right. But, you know, I just loved kind of the game breakingbreaking ability that cj did have with his running ability um and you know obviously he was able to convert you know a lot of on a lot of big throws um as well so you know um personally i'm a fan of running quarterbacks um but obviously i don't i mean i didn't think you know kirk had said um that there really is no controversy as far as the quarterback position goes. It's going to be Spencer as long as he's healthy. But, yeah, I mean, just so it's out there, I love mobile quarterbacks. And I would at any time, like if I was if I was a coach, right, I'm putting my mobile quarterback in there because, you know,

I just love that the ability that they have because they can, you know, extend the play with their legs and create. But I think obviously Spencer is going to be in there. So obviously I'm going to rally behind Spencer. But obviously he's just got to be able to, you know, make some of these, some of these throws. He's got to be able to make the decisions, you know, in his head quicker, right.

And, you know, give the, give the guys a chance to convert on plays. And obviously other guys got to help them, right. The offense line has to be able to make the decisions. I mean, make the, make the blocks in the passing game and, you know, receivers obviously have to come down with footballs when the ball is on target, right. We got to catch them. So. Yeah. In looking at this game,? We got to catch it. Yeah.

In looking at this game, I went back to look at the stats. There's only three drops credited towards our Iowa receivers. I would argue there's probably four to five that you could say is a mix of Spencer not placing the ball correctly. And our wide receivers probably should have came down with it. Although they're not getting credited with the drops. So overall overall i thought that was not a very good thing to see um interestingly enough and i don't want to get into this too deeply but tyrone tracy jr coming into the season i thought he was going to be our x factor i thought he was going to be the guy to step in and replace amir smith marseille and brandon smith i personally felt like he was a

nice mix of both. He didn't have the speed of Amir. He didn't have the contested catchability of Brandon, but he was just a tier or two below on both those aspects with better yak ability, in my personal opinion. We have not seen that from Tyrone this year to this point. This past game, only one reception, only one target. And there was some interesting stuff put out on Twitter by members of his family.

I don't want to get into that too much. I just – I guess I'm just – I don't know what's going on. I don't understand how we can't get the ball to Tyrone. And then when we see guys like Keegan Johnson come in, Keegan has looked phenomenal in every snap he's gotten that's been meaningful I mean he came in there and took that end around and fought for yards it looked like he was like I'm gonna get to the end zone I loved I loved what we saw from Keegan when he came in and then came up with another catch as well just a few moments later so um I guess I don't even know a question

I'm trying to ask here to be honest I just um it's frustrating to see I don't even know a question I'm trying to ask here, to be honest. I just – it's frustrating to see. I don't understand how we're not getting Tyrone involved. I don't understand why we're not getting Keegan more involved because clearly we're not getting the production we need at the wide receiver position. Guys aren't getting open for Spencer. When they are getting open, Spencer's not delivering it well, and they're not catching it.

I guess open-ended statement for me anything you want to say on that before we touch on some some higher level concepts from iowa yeah so for starters i see i gotta give keegan a lot of credit um i think yesterday he did have a drop so we'll get that yeah he had a couple drops yesterday um which obviously he knows that he can't have. But those aside, right, I love that his ability when he gets the football in his hands, right? I mean, he treats – it looks like every time he touches the football, he's like – he doesn't know if it's going to be the last time he's going to touch it. So, like, he's going out there. It's like he's playing for his life.

He's like, I'm going to die if I don't score the touchdown or score the football at this. Yeah, yeah. Like, he's out there, you know, trying to make a play every single time he touches football, which I love. I think he I mean, he runs through contact like he's a running back, which I love. I mean, as a young as a young guy. Right. It's all that's already hard enough to do, you know, throughout your career just to run through contact break tackles. But to do it as a freshman is fantastic right and i just think that he has a extremely bright future um you know obviously he's just obviously got to get more consistent um with catching some of those you

know tougher catches right where guys are on your back and kind of roped over top of you um but i love his ability love his ability now you know as far as the Tyrone Tracy situation, you know, I don't I don't really know what's going on there. Obviously, Tyrone's not having the season he wants at all. Right. And, you know, one one catch on one target, I mean, is obviously very, very frustrating for a guy who i felt like was a very it was a huge playmaker i mean thinking back i mean heck uh a few years back right when he had that touchdown against uh northwestern right where he broke like three tackles right and then took it for a long touchdown um you know obviously we know that he has great ability with the football in his hands. And I don't know what's going on if he's if, you know, he fell out of favor, you know, with coaches in the building, if he's not practicing well or what it is. But whatever whatever the situation is obviously needs to get fixed.

obviously needs to get fixed right because he is a playmaker um with the football in his hands and you know getting the play the ball in our playmakers hands um is very important right i mean that's part that's part of you know having successes on on the offense right and getting the football and playmakers hands right getting it in tyler's hands right getting it in Tyler's hands right getting it in uh Samuel Porter's hands getting it in Keegan's hands um Tyrone's hands right um Charlie Jones um and even Nico right I mean getting it in their hands right where guys can make plays and I feel like we are not doing a good job of that at all at all I mean you just go through the stats right um and you know not that many people seems like not that many people are really touching the ball and if they are touching the ball right nothing's really happened with it or the play is just um completely dead or or whatever

so you know it's very frustrating it's, very frustrating to watch because you obviously know that you have talented guys all over the field. And you have talented guys who you can't get the football to. And, you know, frankly, we're just not doing a great job of it, right? There's not as much creativity that I would like to be able to get these guys the football. So, obviously, it's something that's got to be fixed, right? You got to start just thinking, you know, way outside the box that we're in because, you know, obviously like what we're doing isn't working.

Yeah. Couldn't agree more. When you look at the snap counts, I thought this was really interesting too. Keegan Johnson actually led the wide receiver group and snapped with 44. Now a lot of that came, some of that came in garbage time towards the end. Tyrone Tracy checked in at third and snapped.

So Nico had 35, Tyrone had 30, Charlie had a 21. So interesting when you see what is supposed to be your number one wide receiver coming out of camp, there was a lot of hype in Tyrone. The coaches have talked very highly about Tyrone the entire time, and now he is third in snaps. You have his family posting things on Twitter, which is probably never a good spot to air out your grievances and concerns about Tyrone. I don't want to ever speculate on

transfer situations, but definitely a situation to monitor going forward. If Tyrone continues to not be involved in the offense, he ultimately has to do what's best for him. And if he's not getting involved and he has aspirations, I mean, if you're catching one ball a game in the Big Ten for Iowa, that's going to be tough to make scouts notice you. So interesting thing to watch as we move forward. Wanted to talk about two kind of more general concepts, recruiting.

How does a game like that or two games like this impact recruiting? Now I know people aren't going to judge and say, oh, I'm not going to Iowa because of one game. But it has to have some sort of impact. You've been through this process before. We had the Penn State game. I mean, emotions were high. Recruiting was trending up.

We saw three or four guys decommit from their schools. All of a sudden, Iowa might be having an amazing, you know, clash from a star perspective. Xavier was trending towards Iowa. We had Kyler Casper was like, oh, my gosh, this school is great. Of course, Kevin's always going to talk very highly of Iowa. But if you're Kyler Casper was like, oh, my gosh, this school is great. Of course, Kevin's always going to talk very highly of Iowa. But if you're if you're Kyler looking at this offense, you've got to be a little concerned about what you're seeing. How does how does this impact recruiting?

Have you been through a situation like this when you were going through recruiting? Just kind of walk me through that, please. Oh. I guess. No, not in a sense. No. Because, I mean, I was a sense, no. Because, I mean, I was committed to Boston College before I was committed to Iowa. And, you know, Boston College wasn't good to begin, wasn't that great to begin with. And then they were even worse, like, the year before, so it was at 2012. They were even worse.

And they, like, let go of let go like their entire staff and everything um and obviously yeah you're just like okay obviously i'll open it open it back up this necessarily isn't that type of situation um where uh you know obviously the coaches we're not as bad as boston college yeah the entire staff isn't getting tire fired right so that's obviously not an issue right but um you know when you look at uh so first off obviously defense you're like hey if i hey if i come to iowa and play defense right i'm gonna play all the time i'm gonna be getting my reps in hey people gonna be able to see me all this and that you're like okay cool uh so you know you might not think about that as much right but um you know on the offensive side of the football you think about it you're

like man if i'm a receiver right i don't know you know what my production is going to be right it could be uh really good right or you know we could struggle to pass the football right so i don't know if it's a place where i would end up want to go right um and then obviously like running backs right you know you're going to get the football you're going to be working to the offense no matter what um but from you a receiver spot perspective, that can be a little bit scary or hesitant because you're like, I don't know if I'll be able to make an impact because I don't know how many opportunities I'm going to get to catch the football. So when you have offensive performances like that, it can be uh i guess it can be a

little bit scary i guess in the recruiting side of things right you know you don't know what um what that's going to look like you know whether it's week to week right because it feels like you know we have a different offensive performance you know every single every single um saturday uh right so you know what can't i don't really know where I'm going, but I do know that having performances like that does not help recruiting at all. And hopefully that these guys can help right the ship. And then who knows? Maybe these guys are like, hey, obviously the guys you know, right now aren't getting it done. So, hey, maybe I can come in, right, and make that impact, right, and make the change where, you know, maybe guys – we can make an impact, right?

I mean, you do have some freshman or younger players that are coming in and playing now. I mean, obviously you got Keegan. You know, we got Arlen Bruce, right? He's been in there. Obviously we got Gavin Williams, right, who played pretty, pretty good amount of snaps yesterday as well. So, you know, having having young guys in, you're like, hey, maybe I can be that next young guy in. Right. And I can help, you know, create some change in offense.

So, you know, it's kind of kind of a two way street. But, you know, hopefully, like in the grand scheme of things, right, obviously the coaches are continuing to preach to, you know, recruits and stuff like, hey, you know, obviously we had a bad week and we had a bad string of weeks, but, you know, we're obviously trying to right the ship. That's why we're trying to get you into the building, right? So kind of put it like that. I mean, you can basically flip any storyline to be whatever

or fit whatever narrative you want. We're not playing well, so let's get you in. We are playing well. Look how good you'd be in here. So it definitely makes sense. I would agree, defensively speaking. I don't know how you watch the Iowa defense and not think, yeah, I want to be there, especially the defensive back.

I don't know how you watch the Iowa defense and think, I don't want to play for Phil Parker. I mean, Riley Moss was a great shirt who ended up being put on scholarship late and then started his freshman year and performed pretty well. He had some ups and downs. And now he's projected to be potentially a second-round draft pick. I mean, yes, part of that is evaluating talent and finding guys who maybe are under the radar.

But there's also some development in that as well. And a lot of that comes from phil parker what he does with defensive backs i don't know how you can't look at that as a defensive back and say yes i gotta go play there um yeah so that pretty much does it lashaun anything else you want to cover on the show today anything you want to cover about this this team um i guess for me personally i just want to wrap it up by saying we have four more games left and we're going to be favored in all those four games and there's still a lot to play for on the table. I mean, this team could still go 10 and two.

We're not facing a defense like we did against Wisconsin. Nebraska's defense is solid, but we're not facing a defense like we have in Wisconsin or Penn state again. So a lot to play for. We still can go 10 and two. We still could go to a big bowl. We might not win the big 10 West, which is very annoying and frustrating but we can still have a lot of things to play for anything else you want to say before we wrap up the show no it's just you know as an offensive player watching us on offenses has been

painful this year and i'm hoping hoping hoping hoping right we can get some some change going around get some positive positive performances on the ground which we haven't really been able to to really get um i feel like we haven't really got anything kind of going offensively so watching us on offense does bring me so much pain and i'm hoping hey maybe they get a little kick that was a kick in the butt right and you know we can you know get back on track because again we still got some um big games you know for the rest of the year so uh you know hopefully we'll go out there and be able to perform for them so but no i mean that's really pretty much it for me um you know again appreciate you having me on and and go hawks yeah man as always

uh it's a pleasure having you on. We hate recapping losses. It would be good to recap a win every single time. But nevertheless, here we are. We're doing it. We got you all broke down with what happened in this game. We'll be covering Iowa Hawkeye football the rest of the week as well. We're also going to start covering some women's basketball, some men's basketball, and some wrestling.

All that stuff is kicking off this upcoming couple weeks. So lots of fun stuff coming in Iowa Hawkeye Nation. Plus we have field hockey as well. We're our number one ranked team. They did suffer a loss, but they are performing very well on pace to potentially win a national championship. So a lot of good stuff going on in Iowa Hawkeye Nation. While all of you might be a little sad about football, which I am as well,

lots of good things going on at Hawkeye Nation. Thank you all for listening in to this episode of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. Have a fantastic weekend and even better Monday, and let's go Hawks!