Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Iowa Football: Nico Ragaini reprimanded by Big Ten, Noah Shannon career over, Hawkeye Mailbag

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

Trent Condon returns with a look at the public reprimand that was given out from the Big Ten to Iowa Hawkeye wide receiver Nico Ragaini.Then thoughts on the collegiate career of Noah Shannon coming to a close after the NCAA refused to reduce his suspension because of sports gambling.Finally it's a Hawkeye mailbag with your questions and comments.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Jase MedicalSave more than $360 by getting these lifesaving antibiotics with Jase Medical plus an additional $20 off by using code LOCKEDON at checkout on jasemedical.com. Athletic BrewingGo to AthleticBrewing.com and enter code LOCKEDON to get 15% off your first online order or find a store near you! Athletic Brewing. Milford, CT and San Diego, CA. Near Beer.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase.LinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. Terms and conditions apply.eBay MotorsKeep your ride-or-die alive at ebay.com/motors. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Right now, NEW customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED in BONUS BETS – GUARANTEED. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Iowa Hawkeye wide receiver Nico Ragaini has been reprimanded by the Big Ten what a crock of you are locked on Hawkeyes your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes part of the Locked On Podcast Network

your team every day Come in. I'm Trent Condon, and this is the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Thanks for making Locked On Hawkeyes your first listen every day. We're available wherever you get podcasts. You can also find us on YouTube. While you're there, make sure you hit that subscribe button. It helps us get in front of more Hawkeye fans. Today's episode of Locked On Hawkeyes is brought to you by our friends at Jace Medical.

Jace Medical, empowering yourself when you purchase a Jace case, providing you with a personal supply of five antibiotics that treat 50 or more infections. Get yours today at JaceMedical.com. That's J-A-S-E Medical.com. Well, some news today is handed down from the Big Ten as Nico Ragaini. Yes, the Hawkeye wide receiver, the six--year man he was hit with a reprimand now there's not a whole lot that can be done but before we get too deep into this let's

hear what nico had to say and uh if you miss these comments these are courtesy of who 13 and john sears who was was in Iowa City on Tuesday. I mean, I feel like, was the NCAA or Big Ten going to find me if I say that's a horse **** call or what? Yeah, I don't know. I probably shouldn't have talked to F-bomb in there, but God, ****, oh, Jesus. There it is. There's Nico Ragaglini. And yeah, we cleaned it up for you a little bit there.

But yeah, some choice words now it was a terrible call we all know that and this is not your typical press conference this is not nikaragi ini standing up at the lectern up at the podium with the questions being handed down you know this is a side session it's a lot more free it's a lot more free. It's a lot more loose. It's a guy that's also, you know, in his sixth year of college, too. I mean, he's going to let it fly a little bit more. I personally don't have a problem with it. What he said, he said what we all thought. He said what even Cyclone fans would admit.

It was a terrible call. Not language. You can go with that. Guy's 24 years old. I mean, come on. Guys use language. You think this is the only football's 24 years old. I mean, come on. Guys use language. You think this is the only football player that uses that kind of language? Come on. We know better than that as well.

So let's not sit up here on Mount Pius looking down at everybody below you because the guy used some choice language here. So here's what we get from the NCAA. Or excuse me, from the Big Ten. And it just cracks me up that this is what we get from the big 10 after this comes down a public reprimand nico thought it was going to be coming his way from the big 10 the big 10 conference announced today iowa football student athlete nico ragini has been issued a public public reprimand for violating the big 10 sportsmanship policy

following his comments regarding officiating in reference to the September 9th game against Iowa State, Big Ten Conference Agreement 10.01 states in part, the Big Ten Conference expects all contests involving a member institution to be conducted without compromise to any fundamental element of sportsmanship. Such fundamental elements include integrity of competition, civility towards all, respect particularly towards opponents and officials. Unquote. Wank, wank, bleh.

Come on. I mean, just sanctimonious looking down on everybody. It shouldn't come as a surprise. Now, the best part about this, though, is the response to the response. And the response back and the clap back from Niko Ragini. And this was not in a statement that he put out on his own. This comes from the University of Iowa and Matt Whitesell, Big Whites, the SID.

This is what Niko said in response. This is great. I want to apologize for my public criticism of Saturday's officiating. I am a competitive person and player. My comments reflected my passion for the game, and I apologize for my choice of language. Yeah, exactly. The last part's the best.

I apologize for my choice of language. I don't apologize for what I said. It's my choice of language. Because he's dead right. Now, this is a lighter note. We're having fun with it. Nothing's going to come of it. It's my choice of language because he's dead right. Now, this is a lighter note. We're having fun with it. Nothing's going to come of it. There's no fines. We're not talking professionals here. He was having fun. It was a quote. We get a day's story out of it and we move on, right? That's just what happens. We go to another story, though, that isn't heartwarming,

and that is the end of the career at the University of Iowa on the football field for Noah Shannon. We know, and we talked about it throughout the whole summer, the gambling investigation. And Noah Shannon, as we found out before Big Ten Football Media Days, he was one of the players involved. And for a young man to see his collegiate career come to a close for making a bet at an Iowa sporting event. Not his own team. That's not what this was. Making a bet on the women's basketball team and their run to the Final Four and the National Championship game.

Making a bet on that. And for his career to come to a close, the crime does not fit the punishment here, or the punishment doesn't fit the crime. It's just dead wrong. Now, we shouldn't be surprised by this. We shouldn't be surprised because the NCAA is an awful organization and has been for a long time. Remember also the NCAA, they don't have a whole lot to do. Look, NIL has completely changed things. You have coaches out there outright lying to their faces, and nothing ultimately is done. Jim Harbaugh was going to coach and then decided to back turn,

and Michigan actually told him, no, you are going to be sitting out games this year. You have an organization that has guys committing crimes. This was not a crime. Noah Shannon did not commit a crime. It was an NCAA violation. He didn't have a girlfriend on the team. He didn't have inside information. But the hope was, as you look at this, you look at the amount of money that was spent, that was made on the bet. And you understand. But that's not the case.

And Kirk Ferentz last night on the coach's show on the radio, Kirk Ferentz in the press conference on Tuesday when he delivered the news that the career was over for Noah Shannon. You could tell how disappointed he was. But it's a committee. It's a faceless organization. You don't know who ultimately made the decision it's three people that decide the fate three people scattered across the country and you don't know who makes that decision that's what it comes down to the NCAA got it wrong but we shouldn't be surprised and they had an opportunity here to make an example of Noah Shannon. And we knew that was going to happen.

Look, I get betting on your own team, ultimate no-no. Betting on if you're a college football player, football, college football, absolutely no-no. I get that. You got guys you went to high school with, guys that you camped with, guys that you just know because of competing against them. That's when you get into a little bit dicier situation when you're talking about that. This, look, the Iowa women's basketball

team, they didn't even come back from Seattle. They went straight from Seattle to Dallas. And he didn't put against him. He got coughed up in the hype. And his career's over. We shouldn't be surprised by it. He knew the rules, and that's the part of it that I can't go down the road of that he was completely screwed up. I had a feeling this was going to be the ultimate endgame. Disappointing, absolutely. And disappointing for a great kid, a great young man. He has said all the right things, and he did all the right things, except make a mistake. He bet on women's basketball.

And that is enough for his career to be over in a Hawkeye uniform. We've got a busy show here today, a lot more coming, including our Hawkeye mailbag. We will bounce around here. Tons of comments over on YouTube. We will get into those. I want to say thank you, speaking of YouTube, to some of our newest members of this week.

A big thank you to Scott Waterman, Rob Bixby, Jim Mills, Eric O'Brien, Lawrence Woodford, Jeremy Keys, Justin Hemsath, Kyle Baker. Who else we got in here? We got Jeremy Petsche and Block the Boss. Thanks to all of them this week for joining us on YouTube. All you have to do hit that subscribe button. It helps us get in front of more Hawkeye fans. Takes you just a second

and it's a big help for us here on Locked on Hawkeyes. We continue with your comments and your questions from YouTube and from X. It's not Twitter anymore. It's not Twitter anymore. It's X. We'll do that as we continue here on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast.

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Thanks for making Locked On Hawkeyes your first listen every day. As we roll through here, time to go into the mailbag and see what the people have been talking about, what you're thinking about out there in the Twitterverse and X, and of course on the comment section on the YouTube side of things. So let's kick things off here. And we're in fact going to go first, got one, on the comments section on the YouTube side of things. So let's kick things off here. And we're, in fact, going to go first. Got one here on X. I thought an interesting one from Twitter.

Bring it back up here and find exactly where that was. All right, here we go. And boom, here it is. All right, so here is the question. This is from Chad Orstad. 4-2 versus a 4-3, the 4-2-5 defense versus the 4-3. I didn't hear the percentage of use each against Iowa State. I like Fisher as a linebacker, but think Castro is too good to take off even on rundowns. Thoughts? You know, Chad, first of all, the numbers. It was about 33% of the time that Iowa played the traditional 4-3 defense.

Now that is a number that has continued to go down throughout the years. Last year after the Justin Jacobs injury, that number dwindled down, though we saw Jay Higgins out there in that outside linebacker role, playing opposite of Higgins, excuse me, with Higgins out there with Seth Benson and of course Jack Campbell in the middle. That number has changed. The thing that I like about Castro is something you said right there. He is a guy that is very good against the run. And we've seen different type of players now in that cash position. We've seen guys do it incredibly well from a Bonnie Hooker and his special skillset that he had. Dane Belton, both those guys still playing, of course, in the NFL. And

now you get Castro, kind of a more, a bigger safety type that moves down there and I think could help out in the box. You saw that game against Utah State and the play that he made, taking on basically three guys. It was one on three out there and he was able to make the play out in space. Had to pick six. We know he has obviously the safety skills that go along with it. I think they're confident that Fisher can help them out, but I would anticipate going forward against most teams. Now, Illinois will be different. We'll probably see a lot more 4-3 set

against the Illini and what they want to do. We'll see against Penn State in a couple of weeks what that looks like and how much the translation is going to be, but I'm with you. You just don't want Castor out there. The way that he is playing and the way that he has stepped up this season, want to keep him out there a whole lot more.

Let's get into some more of your comments. This is a question on the running back spot. And what we talked about yesterday with LaShawn Daniels is Jazz Patterson, the number one running back. Brian Long says, keep them both in the mix. I'm in on both. I completely agree with you. And when we talked about that running back spot yesterday on the show with LaShawn, that's something that I think we all know. You got to have multiple

running backs. You can't just anymore in today's environment go with one running back. Jazz Patterson showed some juice. And I do this i wonder after caleb johnson has seen you know what jazzy on patterson did last week and getting the big run and getting the touchdown and seeing the style that jazz has been using you know not a whole lot of dancing not trying to go for the home run every single time he nearly had the home run on the big run on the short yardage play but not just looking for the perfect run but making sure you're getting north and south and getting something and something maybe we'll see from caleb johnson going forward maybe a little bit uh too much dancing uh this going

back a couple of days when jace was by trying to defend brian ferentz and a lot of comments at jace and i love it hey rip on jace as much as what? Don't rip on me as much, all right? I'm a nice guy. Jace, rip on him all you want. This is from Colton Boyer. This Jace can't be serious. Scripted offense is decent. Playing calling range has been simple. Taking shots on third and short is the most ridiculous.

Well, I got to step back there, Colton. Third and one, one of the best plays of the game is they got behind Bo Frehler, and it was a lache big play. So you can't just run the football every single time on short downs one of the best plays of the game is they got behind Bo Fraylor and it was a Lachey big play so you can't just run the football every single time on time on short downs and certainly can't do it when you can't quarterback sneak I had no problem with that remember a play call that would have put Penn State away a couple years ago and Stanley overthrew him with TJ Hawkinson but come on you got to take some shots Jace you clearly do not know football

like that and uh can't be watching the same Iowa team and coaching that I am. Here's another one. This is from Ted Boogans. Blame the wide receivers is laughable. Charlie Jones literally couldn't see the field receiver at Iowa. When he did, he was unopened as anyone. The transfers lighted up. The fault is clearly on routes and play calling.

I'm right there with you, Ted. That is something that has been a huge bugaboo for this program in general. Going back to really the Greg Davis era and trying to marry what he wanted to do, his philosophy with the zone blocking scheme. It just never married perfectly. They had a successful season, of course, 2015. And the numbers for Greg Davis are a whole lot better than what we see now in the eight years of Brian Barron.

So there's no doubt about that. But there's something about the passing tree, the routes that they run. I mentioned this a week or two ago. Remember the days when we see Marvin McNutt and those crossing routes? When's the last time we've seen a deep in from an Iowa receiver and the ball actually delivered? It's the scheme. That's what I keep going back to with Brian Ferenc. Does he make a good play call every once in a while? Absolutely. You know, the play call against Penn State a couple of years ago

where Raggini gets the touchdown. Yeah, no doubt about it. He can make a good play call. The stop and go route that they had to Seth Anderson nearly went for 90 yards. Nearly, but that's one. And the scripted plays work. I joked on Twitter over the weekend why don't you just

script all 50 plays instead of just 15 to being in the ball game it'd be a whole lot better all right we got to get a little swig here you can tell that a little bit of a cold hate that uh here's another one this from greg johnston brian ferris can only work with the talent he has recruiting and position coaches have to bear the brunt of the offensive woes. With you in terms of talent. I believe the talent is there. I believe this is as talented one through four of wide receiver group that I was had a long time. Of course, they have the highest regarded guy coming out of high school ever for a wide receiver. And I wasn't well, a guy in Caleb Brown, they have, uh, a very solid six-year

senior in Nico Raggini. I mean, we, we know he can make plays. He's shown that ability in the big 10 for five years. Now you have a guy like that, Seth Anderson. He looks to be a good player. Deontay Vines. I think he's been a bit of a disappointment. But again, I don't know if it's a talent issue. I think the talent is there for, certainly this team should be better at 125th in the country in total offense. This one comes from Burger825.

Jayce's take on Brian Ferentz is cringeworthy. Uh-huh. Brian's offenses are so bad. They become a national punchline. Improvement isn't the measuring stick here. Brian Ferencz is cringeworthy. Uh-huh. Brian's offenses are so bad. They become a national punchline. Improvement isn't the measuring stick here. It's competency. That's what I keep going back to.

These metrics were not very difficult. We can argue the 25 points per game until we're blue in the face, and I'm sure we will throughout the course of the season. Talking about some other teams and what they can do, I keep coming back to the scheme. And if they go out this week. And score 42 points against Western Michigan. Both sides of it.

If Iowa goes out and they just win it 24-3. Or if they win it 42-7. Either side. Let's not be beating our chest about this. It's about winning games. That's the bottom line. And if Bryan does enough. To get this offense in a position where they have a double-digit win season, then win the division,

and give themselves a realistic chance in the Big Ten Championship game, we can have a different conversation. But if they go out to Penn State and they lose that one 17-3, and they're non-competitive against a good team, and they lose on the road to Wisconsin, and it's a good, solid 9-3 year. But the offense is the reason they have those three losses?

Absolutely. That's where we get there. Paul Hoffer. Thank goodness for an awesome top five defense. Paul, here's the thing. I hope we have a top five defense this year. I got some concerns with the defense at this point. Inability some concerns with the defense at this point. Inability to get to the quarterback. Now, Joe Evans is getting there. He's just not getting sacked. One sack on the year. Utah State, Iowa State, both those teams got the ball out incredibly fast. I think that's a huge component, easy for me to say, of what we're seeing here. I think that's a big part of it. Hey, if we get back to a top five defense again this year,

with this schedule, we're going to be in really good shape. This is from Cal Smith. Every OC is to blame for their team's offensive failures. Fair enough on that one. 36 teams. This is from Rick. Currently on pace for less than 25 points per game for Big Ten schools, Utah, Iowa State,

Baylor. Ohio State's a little above 29. We'll see. We'll see how this one plays out. Ryan, does a bear poop in the woods with the question, is Brian Barrett to play for the offensive struggles? Yes, right there with you. Alan Parker, just for fun, watch the 85 Iowa-Iowa State game in the 57-3 drumming.ming boy one of those would be fun chuck long ronnie harman an offensive line that blocked boy that sounds good all with small round helmets and huge oversized shoulder pads ah those were the days yes they were alan yes they were uh this is from charlie charles why did kirk ferentz let the offense go terrible the last three years? No reason for offense to go so bad.

If KF is such a good coach, the big reason offense is so bad is when his friend did not have the job, got fired from Miami. Oh, boy. Who's he talking about? The old Philbin? Is that who he's talking about there? I'm not exactly sure. Well, he didn't let it go terrible. It just was terrible. I mean,

nothing changed philosophically where Kirk the last three years decided, you know what I'm going to do? I'm really going to trick these guys. I'm going to go from a bad offense and make it even worse. It wasn't anything that he did philosophically that changed there. The biggest reason for this, and we've talked about this a ton, is the attrition on the offensive line. Brian's not a good play caller. I think we can see that. We have enough evidence, obviously, to see that. But certainly the last two years before this last season, it has been the recruiting misses, both in terms of guys that didn't pan out and guys that left the program, either a couple because of injury. I mean, that hurt incredibly bad. They had to play a lot of young guys the last couple of years.

These woes that we're talking about, uh, definitely a piece of that. Uh, Brian parents is a D two assistant coaches from Kevin and his father is an eight and five coach all time. Yeah. Yeah.

200 wins in his career. Hall of Famer. Pretty good. Yeah. I hear in his career, Hall of Famer. Pretty good. Now, I hear this a lot, is people wanting more. And for the younger people out there, I was in your boat at one time too. Late high school into college. I was ready for the Dr. Tom Aaron basketball to be over. I was ready for it.

I was ready for the Dr. Tom Aaron basketball to be over. I was ready for it. I was ready for something different. Iowa had got to a plateau and just couldn't get past it. And until his final game, or his final win as a Hawkeye head coach, and that was in the round of 32 in the win against Arkansas, it had been a decade since he made the Sweet 16. I was ready for the next level. And that's what we were promised by Steve Alford. And he

delivered that promise. But we don't know, is that a level up or a level down? With a bad coaching hire, Iowa easily is going to step down. I know we get bored with the eight and four season, right? Beat who you should, maybe pull an upset. You probably get upset by somebody you feel like you should beat. And there you are at your 8-4. But you know who would kill for that? Nebraska. Illinois. Northwestern.

Purdue. Michigan State. We can play this game for a long, long time. There are a lot of teams that would kill for what we have. Maybe that's age. I get it. But there's no guarantee. There's no guarantee that the next head coach is going to make this thing better, that it's going to take it a level up. And even in your down years, when you're eight and four, seven and five, those are your bad years. It's pretty dang good. Brian Phillips, the routes, the wide receiver run are bad. Yeah, we talked about that.

Absolutely there with you. How many times do you see receivers close to each other, which brings another defender when the pass is thrown? No slants to Caleb Brown, never gets a reverse or a toss. He was a running back in high school. Great point there, Brian. We've talked about that. Brian Ferris, play designs are not good. I couldn't have said it better. One thing you can't ignore is stats and the oil offense is still bad uh david i still hate to see a handoff up the middle on first down i guess it's better than an incompletion though sometimes they do go backwards justin kirk had listed prior to fall camp that lega labus was second string yeah i should have

called jace out on that yeah labus was second string going Yeah. I should have called Jace out on that. Yeah. Labus was second string going back to, uh, back in July when the big 10 football media day, and we got that first, uh, depth chart of the year he was in front of, uh, Deacon Hill. So yeah, I think Labus, we talked about it. Sounds like sports hernia was the injury he had. He was out for a really long time, basically all of July and most of August. He was out before he got back. It will be interesting. You know, if we do see Labus now, if he is completely healthy, if he regains that number two spot,

if they're going to go with Hill, I'm a Labus guy of the two. I just see Deacon Hill sloppy. I don't see it. I know he's got a strong arm. I know some people are enamored with strong arm. I want a guy that can do more than just throw it, you know, 100 miles an hour. And I think Labus got certainly more to his game than what we have with Hill.

A couple more here as we go through our mailbag on the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. We'll do that as we continue here in a moment. Lockdown Hawkeyes, glad to be with you here today as we're talking some Hawks. Today's episode is brought to you by GameTime and the GameTime app. Buying tickets to your favorite event shouldn't be stressful. GameTime is the fast and easy way to buy tickets for all the sports, music, comedy, and theater near you. With killer deals on last-minute tickets and their best price guarantee, you can stop stressing over tickets and start getting hyped up for the fun that you'll have.

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Lowest price. Guaranteed. Lowest price guaranteed. All right, Trent Conant back with you one final time on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Thanks for making Locked On Hawkeyes your first listen every day. Coming up tomorrow, it is a big day here on the Locked On Network with college football here. We're taking our coverage to a new level.

It is Lockdown College Football Kickoff Live each Friday. Lockdown, we're going to go live from 10 to noon Central Time on every one of our college YouTube channels. College Football Kickoff Live, going to cover everything going on. Playoff implications, rivalry games, not a whole lot going on there this week in college football. And we're going to go in-depth like only we can here on Lockdown, including insight and

analysis from our stable of Lockdown College hosts covering their team every day. Five Lockdown College football kickoff live every Friday from 10 to noon on any Lockdown College YouTube channel. You won't want to miss it. Final comments here on a mailbag edition

of the Locked On Hawkeyes comment podcast. Told you I'm struggling a little bit here today. Here is one from Hair Trigger 8317. I will say this. There's times where the offense looks real close to clicking in the past game at least. I still don't know what's going on with the running game, but Western Michigan should be a good game to tune things up.

That's where I am too here, Trigger. I know, we want it better. But we all want to see this thing better. And it's frustrating, and it can be maddening at times, and it just feels like they're so dang close to really getting it done, right? I think it's there. And it's not that they're going to close to really getting it done, right? I think it's there. And it's not that they're going to go out against Penn State

and win it 35-31. No, that's not what it is. That even going up to Madison, they're going to win that game 30-17. No, no, no, no. But it does feel like we're close. Will Brian Ferentz get the blame? This one comes from Ali, if the offense doesn't improve. Absolutely. And the reason is because the Hawkeyes have a real chance of winning the West. Wisconsin still has to play Ohio State, Minnesota. Minnesota has to

play Michigan State, Michigan, Ohio State. Iowa has to take care of business, but it's not like they wouldn't be getting help from Wisconsin and Minnesota right there. I mean, I would love to see a fan duel to give us an updated number of what the division odds would be right now in the Big Ten West. Conference games really haven't happened. We haven't seen a ton, of course. We'll get one this week with Penn State and Illinois. We got to see Indiana, Ohio State back in week number one. I would love to see though, if Iowa's now the betting favorite from the struggles we saw from Wisconsin. Not just the loss last week against Washington State, but even the week before against Buffalo. I said in the summer, I thought Iowa should be the betting favorite. They weren't. And if it wasn't, it should

be a lot closer than the difference was. I would love to see if we could get that one. A couple more on the mailbag. AP football is a game of physicality in order for a team like Iowa run first and often to be successful. The offensive line needs to be dominating the line of scrimmage and they just aren't and haven't been for the last three, four seasons. I would argue even longer than that. AP, I bet the D line kicks the old lines, but. And the O-line is full of a bunch of 300-pound softies. Get me some aggressive guys out there. AP, I don't think you're wrong.

I'm sure the defensive line dominates the offensive line. We've seen it in a few practices that we get to see. It happens every single time. Good stuff. Patrick O'Connell, pro football focus grades on the O-line are average at best. Yes, they are. We've talked about those early in the week every day, or as you certainly know about that, love to take a look at those numbers every week and see if they're matching up with what we're seeing with our eyeballs. Kate makes up for a lot in the passing game. The play calls in the

run game are so predictable. 90% of the time, the teams are just teeing off on the running back right there with you. The predictability at times of the running game. And they went away from Tennessee last week. With the counter plays, what they were able to do, we saw some good things there. Let's hope that that is a step in the right direction. The thing that I love for me there, Patrick, is Cade making up for the passing game. I don't think it can be overstated how important what we're seeing right now with Cade McNamara. He is light years better than anything that I was had certainly the last three seasons.

Just a completely different one. Now, here's something that disagrees. This is Skyler. He says, I know Cade's behind a crap offensive line and injured, but still, he's only slightly better than Petrie, if you ask me. Skyler, I don't know what you're watching. I mean, it's night and day. You know that play that we talked about with Jazzy on Patterson, knocking two guys away and deflecting them as they're bringing a blitz from the outside, and Cade Bactamira was able to backpedal and deliver a strike, I believe it was to Eric Hall for a first down.

Spencer Petras falls over. Spencer Petras doesn't even deliver that pass. Certainly, I tell you this, go back and watch the first two games last year. Go back and find the BTN 60 and you can watch the thing in about 40 minutes. In the South Dakota State and the Iowa State game from a year ago. And watch Spencer Petras in those games.

And if you believe that Cade McNamara is not an upgrade, we're watching a different sport. Let's end it there. We'll be back with you tomorrow, getting you one final look in our final look at Western Michigan. The final tune-up before Big Ten play begins with the road trip out to Penn State. As always, thanks for making

Locked On Hawkeyes your first listen every single day. And Akolu, of course, I want to say, if you're out and about looking for the game, Sirius XM has you covered. It'll be a 240 kickoff where you can catch the game and you can catch the hometown broadcast

with our guy Gary Dolphin up in the booth on the call. Just search on the Sirius XM app, SXM, search Hawkeyes, and it will pop up and you will find that broadcast. A big thank you to them. A big thank you to you for being with us as always. Again, hit that subscribe button on YouTube. Helps us out immensely. We'll talk to you again tomorrow. Go Hawks.