Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Iowa Football: The punt return, no coordinators this week & any hope for change?

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Trent Condon is back for the latest edition of the Locked on Hawkeyes Podcast. A look first at the Cooper DeJean punt return and the response from the Big Ten offices including some quotes from Bill Carollo, the Big Ten coordinator of officiating.A look at the offensive woes and not hearing from the coordinators this week including from offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz. And the long winning streaks against Iowa State, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska coming to an end for one singular reason; the awful offense.What can and should be done in order to give this team a chance offensively over the final 4 games of the season against Northwestern, Rutgers, Illinois and Nebraska? We discuss.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!eBay MotorsWith all the parts you need at the prices you want, it’s easy to turn your car into the MVP and bring home that win. Keep your ride-or-die alive at EbayMotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers.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.PrizePicksGo to PrizePicks.com/lockedoncollege and use code lockedoncollege for a first deposit match up to $100! Daily Fantasy Sports Made Easy!GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase.Jase MedicalGet $20 off these lifesaving antibiotics with Jase Medical by using code LOCKEDON at checkout on jasemedical.com.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.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

After the punt return, that wasn't from Cooper to Gene. Well, we get to hear from the Big Ten Director of Officials, Bill Corrello. Does that calm our nerves? Absolutely not. Today, Locked On. You are Locked On Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome 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. Hey, while you're there, make sure you hit that subscribe button. Just takes a moment. It helps us get in front of more Hawkeye fans. This episode is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook, official sportsbook of Locked On.

Make every moment more. Right now, new customers can bet $5 and get $200 in bonus bets guaranteed. Visit fanduel.com slash locked on to get started. Well, we heard earlier this week through Chad Leistekau of the Des Moines Register from the director of officiating for the Big Ten, Bill Carrillo. And well, the punt return taken off the board from Cooper to Gene shed some light on certainly some of the questions that we had. First, was it a reviewable play? Reading through the rule book, I did not believe it was black and white.

He said that it was. But there was a couple aspects to this. And, you know, the disappointing part looking back, we're not going to be able to get over this. It's going to be incredibly frustrating. This team was on their way to a 7-1 record. And yes, all the warts with it and certainly the offense and something we're going to talk about plenty today is still a big piece of this conversation. But, you know, that's the frustrating aspect of this is you had the game won.

And for those five minutes where inside the stadium, I will tell you, we thought all they were looking at was to see if he stepped out of bounds. They showed the replay up on the video boards. You can see very clearly, no, he didn't step out of bounds. And so we're just waiting and waiting and waiting before finally it comes down. And this Kakamani rule, a rule that not many people knew about and knew certainly that it was something that was reviewable. I also disagree with his interpretation of the rule book. Now, he's a director of officials.

We're talking about semantics here. But the other, the most frustrating part was this part. And Chad Laisdekau did a great job with this, then asking, I think, all the pertinent questions as it pertained to kind of all the different things that we were wondering was this, because you take a look at it and you see exactly how it could be interpreted. As Cooper Dijon is pointing at the football with his right arm, and as he's pointing at the football and he's running back towards his left, And as he's pointing at the football and he's running back towards his left, his left arm is moving. Now, it's impossible to run at the speed that Cooper DeGene does, pointing in one direction and not have your arm have some kind of movement.

He's not a robot. His arm's going to move. And just try it out. Go to your backyard. Go to the park. See if you can do that. And see if your arm, your left arm, as you're pointing, isn't going to have some kind of movement. That aside.

And there's that angle from the top, from the end zone, that you can see very clearly. Yeah, there is movement with the hand. Now, I personally don't believe that it was a fair catch signal or even an invalid one, but that's what they maintain. And this is very much support your guys. Look, I talk to a lot of officials. I have some of my best friends are officials. Stat Boy is an official, all right?

You know him from the podcast. We have plenty of officials. And they like to support their own. So be it. That's kind of any walk of life, right? You support people, for the most part, inside your profession. And the same thing is happening here. But this is a quote from Bill Carollo of the Big Ten, director of officiating.

Quote, if you look at ground video of it, you might say this doesn't look like much of a wave. But if you look at the high camera view over the top, he's actually waving. Here's the problem, Bill. The players are not playing in a blimp. They're not hanging out on a hovercraft. The players are not elevated over the field. It's at ground level. It's at field level.

And when you see that video and you see the picture and you see the video from there, you see very clearly that there was no intent, that there was no motion. There was nothing that would lead the Minnesota defenders on the punt team to believe that he was calling for any kind of fair catch. And then we get into this gray area

and indisputable video evidence. That's a term that we've heard now for decades, right? Indisputable. I think here we are three days afterwards, and we know that this is definitely disputable, right? We can definitely have this dispute about the way this played out. Here we are. Nothing's going to change.

I was six and two. I was still in the driver's seat for a Big Ten West title. Now any wiggle room that they had is gone. Ohio State plays Wisconsin this week. Figure that's going to hand the Badgers another loss. Gophers still have them, also the Buckeyes, on their scheduled remaining way. Iowa finishes up with Northwestern. Illinois, Rutgers, Nebraska.

Not exactly murder's row. Look, it's a bad division. There's no two ways about it. It's an awful division. And maybe the worst division out of Power Five conferences that we've seen in the current structure of college football. I don't think that's hyperbolic. It's awful. It's brutal. But you still could have got there. And the excitement of last week and the excitement of that moment with less than a minute and a half to play, that excitement was taken away by an interpretation of the rules that is gray area. They put up the stiff upper lip. That's what they do. That's supporting your own. I get that. Indisputable? Absolutely not. Not even close. Now, with all that being said, you look at the drive chart, and you had two yards of offense in the second half.

The box score gives them 12 yards of total offense in the second half. Either way, it's garbage. This offense is garbage. It has been garbage. You have an incompetent offensive coordinator, and the question becomes, will there be change? We'll talk about that. We will not hear from Brian Ferentz this week. We will not hear from the coordinators as we normally do from a bye week. What's up with that? A little protection. Frustration, anger, a bye week.

Doesn't sit very well with me. And that quote from Carollo definitely didn't sit well. Well, if you look at the ground video, yeah, that's where they play. Come on. You ever had a shake, Bill? Live in reality. Unbelievable. We got a lot more here, including speaking of the Big Ten West, getting to Indianapolis. It's still a tall task for this team and this offense. And what do they need to do at the quarterback position? There is no doubt a change needs to be made. Iowa needs to do something incredibly different at the quarterback position if there's going

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official partner of the NFL. Trent Conant back with you again on the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. As always, thanks for making Lockdown Hawkeyes your first listen every day. Well, speaking of FanDuel, the odds have been updated to win the Big Ten West. Yes, somebody will still represent the West in Indianapolis for the final year of the divisions. And a little bit of a change, well, a pretty major change after last week.

Iowa was the favorite. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see it right there. Badgers now the betting favorite, plus 125. That means bet $100, win 125 if the Badgers represent the West in Indianapolis. The Hawkeyes still the second choice at plus 140. Iowa does have the tiebreaker currently over the Badgers. Tied for third, Minnesota and Nebraska, both plus 650 to punch their ticket to Indianapolis. And then you get into the long shots.

Northwestern, there they are, 300 to one. Illinois and Purdue, both 500 to one. So yeah, you can really argue it's probably a four-team race and maybe even less than that. These teams will all play each other going forward. Minnesota, Wisconsin at the end of the year. Minnesota, Wisconsin at the end of the year. Iowa, Nebraska at the end of the season. We still have to see those matchups that are going to play out. So still a lot to be figured out there.

So how does Iowa get there? How does the Hawkeyes get to that point to get this offense competent? Again, they will be a favorite against Northwestern and Wrigley Field. And looking forward to that. If you're heading to Wrigley, again, we'll be at Merkel's doing a live podcast on Friday myself and LaShawn Daniels former Hawkeye running back about two o'clock is when we plan to get started with that one also a Saturday morning one if you're in a little bit earlier I'll do my radio show on Friday for Merkel's from 11 to 1 Merkel's the Hawkeye bar of Wrigleyville should be a great

time there and really looking forward to that. So we have that going on. But they're going to be a favorite. Probably 9, 10-point favorite, something like that, against Northwestern. Against Rutgers, at home, I will be a favorite. They'll be a favorite against Illinois. And then you wrap it up against Nebraska.

Right now, some of the power rating systems and some of the projections have this about a one-point spread where Nebraska is the slight favorite in the game. But to get to that point, to get to 4-0, even a 3-1 and probably still get to Indianapolis, look, this offense just has to be a whole lot different. And God love Deacon Hill. He's not the guy. Statistically, the profile is as bad as anything that we've ever seen in high level college football. Try to think of a quarterback that has put together numbers like this, a completion percentage under 40%.

I mean, it's impossible to do. It's impossible to come up with anything that is anything close to this. And thinking back to some of the putrid offenses of the past, there's just nothing like it. 37 of 98, completing 37.8% of his passes. At this point, two touchdowns, three interceptions, five fumbles, three of them lost on the year. A week ago, Kirk was smirking, doing his thing,

acting like he knows more than everybody, and he's got it all figured out because he's the king. Well, he said, I don't know the stats, but I don't want stat. He didn't turn it over. In the Wisconsin game, he nearly, I don't know the stats, but I know one stat. He didn't turn it over. In the Wisconsin game, he nearly turned it over twice. He had an interception by a defensive lineman that was knocked out of his hands by Mason Richmond on a great play. Another, as they're trying to salt away the game,

Deacon Hill also fumbled that away. It's not to kill Deacon Hill. It's to kill Kirk's son. Brian Ferentz were putting him out there. For having this be your idea of a backup quarterback, for being in this perpetuity of just awful quarterback play for a half decade now. That's where it is.

That's where the problem lies. And since Ken O'Keefe retired, this thing has gone absolutely putrid. Over the last two years, the quarterback play has been nothing short of brutal. There's nothing in the country close to this. And not only at the power structure, across the board, there is nothing that you can point to that is as bad as what I was seeing at the quarterback position over the last two years. It's just unthinkable to be at this point.

And to say we evaluate a practice and we see these things. Okay, so be it. You know, there's certain guys that are gamers, right? There's certain guys that don't practice real well, but they step up. Well, maybe there's the other side too. There's people that practice really well, but when the game actually happens, they can't do it.

And that very well could be Deacon Hill. And if that's the case, you have to move on. Well, Joe Labus is likely transferring. And if you were Joe Labus, you'd do the exact same thing. Same thing with Deuce Hogan and Alex Padilla and Carson Mayne and back. And we can go back and talk about this for a long time. Of course, they're going to transfer. Of course, they're going to move on.

Look, you can't get a snap in this offense with this quarterback play. And you can't get an opportunity. Why wouldn't you transfer? And if he's got one foot out the door, so be it. But you're still here to win football games. You're still here because we as fans, that we are out there supporting this team. You owe it to us.

Not me, media member. Me, fan. You, fan. They owe it to us to try and to not try. And that was a frustrating part of last year. Brian had the, quote, what's the upside? Well, the upside is it could be better than what it is right now, which is the worst, the worst offense in the country.

That's the upside. And the same thing here. Deacon isn't working. It's not working. You have to try. And if it's not Joe Labus, then make it the freshman, Marco Lyonis. If Lyonis is not ready or you don't think that he can compete, well, you just recruited him.

That goes back to you again as the coaching staff. You evaluated this guy. You thought that he was a guy that could win in the Big Ten. And, whoa, whoa, whoa, it's too early. He's just a freshman. Come on. Football is so different we see freshmen across the country come in and are able to figure it out why can't they figure out this scheme the scheme that is awful speaking of scheme here's something from scott dockerman of the

athletic he just had the screenshot up today of a play in the i-Minnesota game. Again, YouTube viewers, you can see this talking about a play. So Iowa running out of a shotgun set. Two receivers on each side. Haven't blocked decently well up front. Even with that, there's still two unblocked guys because all game long, Minnesota's setting the safeties. They have eight, nine guys in the box every single time. A reason that obviously Iowa can't run the football.

You don't have enough blockers. It's incredibly difficult to get anything going. But you look on the near side of the field. There is a cornerback playing off the wide receiver. Eight yards. This is two steps after the snap. You RPO this thing. You hold it in that running back,

have the safeties commit, pull it out, and chuck it out there. Not only do you have a first down, that thing might go for six. There is nobody in the middle of the field. Is Iowa willing to do that? Of course not. God forbid they try.

Let's just keep beating our head against the wall and doing the same garbage time in and time out. It's the same garbage time in and time out it's the same stuff every single time brian fair and said during that press conference when we did get him during the bye week a year ago brian talked about that he's gonna go down with the fight right he's not gonna quit he's not gonna walk away okay we know he's not going to go down with the fight, right? He's not going to quit. He's not going to walk away. Okay. We know he's not going to be fired. Should he? Yeah.

Should he last year? Of course. Will he this year? There's another question. But he's not going to quit. He's not going to resign. He's not going to walk away. He's going to fight.

So if you're going to fight, don't you try? Don't you try to do something different? You've doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on the same garbage time in and time out. Your concepts do not work. Your passing offense does not work. It just doesn't. Are you just going to keep doing the same thing with the same quarterback that is in over his head? Or are you going to try? You owe it to us to try. Will change happen? Probably not.

But this is the perfect time for it. Well, if I got the phone call, what would I do? We'll talk about that as we continue here on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Continuing here with frustrations by weak blues. They are here, no doubt. This is Locked On Hawkeyes. by Weak Blues. They are here, no doubt. This is Locked on Hawkeyes. Today's episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast is brought to you by

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eBay guaranteed fit only available to U.S. customers. Trent Conant back with you one final time on the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. So here we are. Right. Frustrated. Upset. Still lingering. This one's tough to get over. It just is. That's where we are. Tough to get over this loss. And it's tough for a myriad of reasons. So, what other part of this

is the rivalry aspect? I've talked about this earlier this week, every day as you know this. This is my favorite rivalry game. Growing up in North Iowa, family in Minnesota, cousins, family members that went to Minnesota, the rivalry, the pig, just everything. Growing up, this isn't hyperbolic. There were more Gopher fans in Osage in the 80s

than there were Iowa State fans. This was and is still the rivalry game for me. And then you have that unlikable character on the other side, Phil Fleck. He is just, he is so unlikable. And I could go deeper unlikable character on the other side of Phil Fleck. He is just, he is so unlikable. And I could go deeper than that. We won't. He's not an easy guy from the outside, obviously, to root for. And you see this losing streak that he had to the Hawkeyes and Kirk rubbing his nose in it. Yet eight straight wins. Eight straight victories.

And that goes away because of the ineptitude of your offense. We're getting ready to face Burt Bielema in Illinois in a couple weeks. Had eight straight wins until last year. And the 9-6 loss. 222 yards of total offense

in that one. Awful, awful quarterback play that day. Nebraska last year at the end of the season. Cooper DeGingo gets injured. Give up a couple of big pass plays as backups weren't ready to go. You lose that one. And with it, a seven game winning streak at the hands of Nebraska. So the Minnesota winning streak's over. The Illinois winning streak is over. Last year, the Nebraska winning streak ended. Last year, also, the Iowa State winning streak came to an end. And there is one thing that you can point to in every single one of those losses.

Yeah, offense. Offensively, they are so challenged. So what do you do? What's the game plan? I mean, the simplest thing is you go to your backup in Joe Lavis. You give him a shot, see if he can do something to ignite. He's not a statue back there. He can move around a little bit.

He can make plays. If you're scared about him making turnovers, Pro Football Focus has the highest percentage of turnover-worthy plays in the country to one deacon hill before that came back to mary was not better much better than that but he was out there so this garbage that kurt tried to spoon feed us last week about i know there was one number not out there it was turnovers yeah it's not true turnover worthy plays deacon hill leads the country and if joe labus goes out there and throws some interceptions you know what

it's not going to be worse than this but can't be much worse and do something else too go wildcat and the biggest one that we continue to hear and continue to talk about if you saw cooper dejean play at the high school level, I know he was playing two-way football at Odebel to Arthur, Battle Creek, Art of Grove. I get it. I absolutely get it. It's a different level. And is he going to be the pure quarterback? No. But with his athleticism, his short range of motion, the quick burst that he has, he's going to be able to do something. Go Wildcat.

Last year, you put a tight end in Sam Laporta as a Wildcat quarterback. You tried. You tried to do something. Why won't you try to do something now? It's a bye week. You have the time. Use your head. Do something.

Be one of those coaches that actually evolves. It's not just about your system. It's about giving your team the best chance to win. This is not complimentary football. Kirk loves to talk about, well, it's complimentary football, right? That's not what this is. Not at all. You know what would be really helpful to this team and a big compliment? A couple first downs, a sustained drive, keeping the defense off the field, not having them have to put out the fire every single time. That would be what you're looking for.

Instead, we're going to bet this again. Is this the last year, Kirk? We will see. We got a lot more coming up this week here on Locked On Hawkeyes. We know recruiting is the name of the game. What does this putrid offense do to recruiting? We will talk to our recruiting guru here on the Locked On Network, John Garcia.

He'll stop by on tomorrow's podcast. And then on Friday, it'll be with Sean Daniels, former Hawkeye running back in his Friday spot. We'll talk about what he's seen with this Iowa offense. Thanks for making Lockdown Hawkeyes your first listen every day. We'll be back with you again tomorrow. Until then, go Hawks.