Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Iowa lands 3-star CB from Tampa | Analyzing the craziness of the 2009 Hawkeye squad | Mock draft analysis

Episode Date: April 15, 2020

The Hawks land their 9th commit in the class of 2021. We break down his film and what this commit means at a high-level for the program before jumping back in to our series covering the 2009 Iowa Hawkeye squad. On today's episode, we look at the craziness of the team. So many comebacks, so many interceptions, and one of the best defenses of all-time. Our show wraps up with analysis of a few mock drafts from NFL Draft analysts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I thank God I was born on the good arms of the Midwest, and not on the battlefields of the U.S. It's a time of panic, and it's intercepted! It's picked off right away! Intercepted by Marty Hooker! Pick six! Eight seconds into the game! Buffen sets up deep in the pocket, goes down the field for Smith! Oh! He got it! Smith! Decks down 85 yards! Iowa! Field for Smith. Oh, he got it. Smith. Touchdown. 85 yards. Iowa.

Touchdown, 10. Taking a shot in the end zone. It is caught. No offense. Touchdown. That's either one or you have it. Go ahead and three. Yes.

Two-point lead for the Hawkeye Nation, to a Wednesday morning episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network. As always, I am your host, Andrew Wade, and I'm happy to be back for another episode of the show today. Lots of stuff to actually talk about on today's show. We do have a recruit that did commit to the University of Iowa in the class of 2021. We're going to be touching on that. We're going to continue our discussion of the best seasons in Iowa football history with our discussion on the 2009 team. I'm talking a lot about the what-ifs.

So what if certain things happened. Talking a bit about some of the themes of that year, the comebacks, that kind of stuff. And then finally, we're going to wrap it up with some discussion about the NFL draft. Basically mock draft talk and where some of the guys are currently projected to go. So if you have listened to this show before and you haven't already done this, make sure to like, review, and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at. Also make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. A great example of why you should be doing this is yesterday we posted a Quarantine House Iowa Hawkeye edition on our Twitter account.

And that got quite a bit of airtime with some of the former Hawkeye players, George Kittle, Pat Angerer, TJ Hawkinson. Other former Hawkeyes were also kind of just interacting with fans of the show as we talked about which house we would love to see. It turned into George Kittle even suggesting doing a case race over Zoom, which I would happily figure out and put the logistics together if they wanted to. But kind of working on that on the side, probably not going to happen. But if it does, it would be really fun to see for Iowa Hawkeye fans

who are just wanting some sports to be happening right now. So anyways, make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But we do have a busy show, so let's jump into it right now. Like I said, Iowa landed another recruit in the class of 2021. It was a cornerback out of Tampa, Jordan Aladokun. I probably messed up that name. My apologies there. But this is a big-time recruit.

Iowa has had some success recently going into the Florida area and getting some high-level recruits, getting some three-star guys. Last year it was Dane Belton came in and started a few games at the dimebacker position for the Hawks as a true freshman. So hopefully a guy like this, Jordan Elodokun, can do pretty well. He had 19 offers coming into this, including Maryland, Penn State, and Iowa State. He's a top 800 player. I believe he's ranked like 768th or something around those lines.

And as a sophomore, he had seven interceptions with three being returned for touchdowns and 10 pass breakups. So I took a look at the tape. Here's some of the things that I really see about him. And then we'll talk a bit about what this means for the recruiting class as a whole. On tape, the tape wasn't,

you gotta keep in mind, tapes are highlights, right? So you're gonna show some of your big plays. Oftentimes that means your interceptions. The one thing I will say is I was not as impressed by the interceptions per se. A lot of it seemed to be bad quarterbacking rather than good placement and good cornerbacking. So the interceptions to me were very just timely interceptions where he happened to be in the right place at the right time. That being said, what did really impress me was, A, he had great hands. He also operated as a wide receiver in that offense, catching over 500 receiving yards,

I think 50 balls on the season. He also operated as a kick return man and the punt return man, and I thought he did a phenomenal job returning the ball. You can see it when he gets interceptions he's looking to score every single time as a punt returner he took a couple back to the house to me that reminds me a bit of Desmond King being at cornerback who can operate as a return man if needed so that that was really exciting to me it I just didn't get a lot of things from his tape from a cornerback perspective a lot of it was off man um and there was only two I think two or three specific highlights that were

him playing corner that was not him tackling or him picking the ball off it was just truly him playing coverage and knocking the ball down and even those I wasn't you just didn't you didn't glean a lot from that information so unfortunate there but like I said not a lot of coverage to play a lot of off man the other big thing is a willing tackler Phil Parker if you want to play cornerback or you know defensive back in his defense you need to be a willing tackler and it did show that he you know he was willing to jump up in the run support game he wasn't going back down. He did a good job of wrapping up at the hips, not just going for a shoulder blow.

So I did like the fundamentals there. So just some of the stuff we saw on tape. Obviously, if there's more tape, I would love to dive into that a little bit more. But that's what we know so far about Jordan Oladokun, the three-star cornerback from Tampa Bay, from Gayther High School. So the other big thing to kind of note about this, this brings Iowa's recruiting class.

They're currently ninth in the country, third in the Big Ten. We saw this happen last season as well, though, because a lot of this is based on just the volume of recruits. So Iowa started off, they were doing pretty well. I believe they're 10th 11th 12th in the country for the lot of the year and then once recruits started actually signing in the class of 2020 they dropped back down a bit but nevertheless always great to see iowa get such a head start on the recruiting class and continue to reel in top level recruits

one of the other big things to note about jordan's decision is that one of his teammates, Gaither High School, Ricky Parks, is a running back, three-star according to 24-7 Sports. I believe he's a four-star on a few other mediums, and he is very high on the Hawks. He listed them as one of his top schools that he's still interested in, so it could be a sign that we could be getting a guy out of Tampa named Ricky Parks good running back it could not be oftentimes you know teammates do want to play together but they're also making these decisions separately because it really depends on the situation as to where you ultimately do go not every school is going to be perfect for both players but we have seen Iowa double dip at schools before so So great to see that.

Hopefully we do end up landing a guy like Ricky Parks, even though we do have a few other kind of top-level running backs that are very interested in Iowa right now. But without a lot of sports going on, it's fantastic to see some recruiting still taking place, despite obviously the restrictions on recruiting in general right now too. But nice to get some news, get some positive news for Iowa Hawkeye Nation and the football

team. Coming up on segment number two, we're going to be continuing our discussion about one of the best seasons in Iowa football history as we discussed that 2009 team that did win the Orange Bowl. Before we do that though, if you have not had an opportunity already, make sure to check out the Locked On NFL podcast mock draft special. If you didn't get a chance to listen to episode one or segment one, I guess you should say, on Friday, an Iowa Hawkeye was drafted.

They're going through every single pick of the first round, including the teams that didn't have picks in the first round. They're making mock picks for them in their second rounds, or if the Texans, it might even be the third round. So they're doing all of that on the lockdown NFL podcast. It is a fantastic show to listen to great production. Lots of folks around the network are on it, giving analysis of the players and,

and whatnot. So I'm highly recommend checking that out. If you don't have an, if you haven't had an opportunity to do so already. We are back with segment number two, talking about that 2009 Iowa Hawkeye football team, a team that is most often revered as one of the best teams in Iowa football history, and a team that also just has a ton of question marks.

And what really stands out to me about this team is how different it was from an Iowa football team perspective. Now, don't get me wrong. They had a fantastic defense as good Iowa teams typically do outside of that 2002 team. Iowa, you know, good Iowa teams typically do outside of that 2002 team. Their offense was, I would say, subpar from a rankings perspective. But what was interesting about that offense is that typically in Iowa football history, the good teams don't have offenses that consistently turn the ball over. And that was not the case for this Iowa football team. So that 2019 ranked 8th in opponents' points per game at 15.4, ranked 86th in points for them at 23.2.

Not a very great spread. This team had just so many close games over the course of the season. Six games, it's got it decided by one score or less. And let's not forget how they had to have a couple miracle-like comebacks just to win a few games. So this is the team that very easily could have gone 13-0. Think about the fact that they barely lost Northwestern. The momentum was on their side. Ricky Sanzy gets injured, rolls his ankle,

and Northwestern goes on to win 17-10 to beat the undefeated Iowa Hawkeyes. The following week against Ohio State, James Vandenberg has to go in and try to win a game for Iowa at Ohio State. That is not an easy task to do regardless of the situation. But without your starting quarterback, that's obviously not easy. They went into overtime before OSU knocked in a 39-yard field goal. But Iowa did tie it up with 2 minutes and 42 seconds, a Marvin McNutt 10-yard pass from James Vandenberg.

They scored two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to come back they were down by 14 um with the at the 11 11 mark and had to come back with a djk 99 yard kickoff return and a marvin mcnutt 10 yard reception um so i mean that think about that they win both those games we're talking about iowa as a team that could have been in the national championship game um just all around a team that just had a ton of potential. But again, they also struggled quite significantly against teams that didn't really matter, barely beating Northern Iowa 17-16. They destroyed Iowa State, barely beat Arkansas State 24-21,

beat Michigan by two points, beat Michigan State by two points on that last second touchdown pass. They had one minute and 32 seconds or something along those lines after Michigan State scored a go-ahead touchdown. They had a drive down the field, and then we had Ricky Stanzi throwing a slant route to Marvin Gnutt to score the go-ahead and the game-winning touchdown against basically an all-out blitz. Indiana, they were down, I believe, 21-7 going into the half. I'm going to confirm that right now. 21-7 going into the half, and Ricky Stanzi was struggling. Yeah, so 21-7, Ricky Stanzi threw five interceptions that game.

Still managed to throw for 337 yards, but only had a completion percentage of 50%. But five interceptions is absurd. But then back once Iowa got into it, back in the second half, they started really picking it up, scored one touchdown in the third quarter to narrow that margin, but then picked it up in the fourth. So in the third quarter against Indiana, Tyler Sash had an 86-yard interception return for a touchdown. In the fourth quarter, at the 13-minute mark, Marvin McNutt gets a 92-yard pass from Ricky Stanzi. Two minutes later, actually less than two minutes later, DJK gets a 66-yard pass from Ricky Stanzi. Iowa takes the lead 28-20 for the

first time in that game. 7 minutes and 34 seconds. Brandon Wager, 6-yard touchdown run. 1 minute and 12 seconds. Brandon Wager, 27-yard touchdown run. I mean, it's just absurd how Iowa won some of these games to go 11-2. So I think oftentimes when you think about this 2019, you think about one of the best teams in Iowa football history. but then you look at some of the details and you're like this could have very well have been a seven and five team a six and six team I mean geez what if they don't

come back versus Indiana what if they don't get that last second touchdown against Michigan State what if they lose to Arkansas State Northern Iowa Iowa? I mean, bam, right there. That's five losses. I just, I don't know. To me, it's crazy to think about how varied this team truly was, despite being what I consider one of the best teams in Iowa football history. Had a ton of former top recruits. Tony Moyocki was a beast. Pat Ang pat anger manning that middle linebacker spot um you had one of the best wide receiver groups in iowa history um with djk and

marvin mcnutt um on the outsides uh i just this team was just insane to me such a such a different team like i said ricky stanzi uh people often think of him as one of the best quarterbacks in Iowa history, arguably one of the best, you know, the best quarterback in Iowa history. And I love me some Ricky Stanzi. I think Ricky Stanzi is an absolute beast. But 17 touchdowns, 15 interceptions that year. Completion percentage of 56.3. James Vandenberg, people think about the fact that he did almost beat Ohio State. Over two games, he had five interceptions and completed less than 50% of his passes. So to me, it's just interesting to think about what our perception of this team is versus some of the realities of this team and kind of what actually went on during that season. That being said, this is a team that had no chill.

They did not care what the situation was. They felt like they could win every single game, no matter what. And that being said, this is a team that had no chill. They did not care what the situation was. They felt like they could win every single game, no matter what. I believe there's a quote I saw when I was doing some research that basically said when Michigan State went up against them in that Iowa game, Iowa basically looked at each other and said, well, this will be fun. And, you know, not even a concern in the world that they couldn't do it but they went on to uh you know drive the ball down the field with a minute and a half left to score that go ahead and game winning touchdown so um just an interesting interesting season all around um the other last thing i want to touch on is the fact that georgia tech probably was the best possible selection of a team to play against Iowa in a BCS Bowl.

I think Iowa that year could have competed with anyone in the nation. But if you want the easiest win out of all those, that would have been Georgia Tech. Because a lot of what Georgia Tech does or did was that triple option offense. And a lot of it requires a smart defense that beat it, it requires a smart defense that stays home and relies on their teammates to be also doing their job. And that is 100% to a T what Phil Parker expects from his defense. That defense is not always the most talented. It's not always the most athletic.

But it, without a doubt, is the most refined and, I guess the best way to put this most refined and the most fundamentally sound defense you could have and against Georgia Tech that was perfect for handling that that triple option and making sure they had no chance of winning that game so love recollecting some of the memories on that 2019 I loved watching that season going to, I think I made it to two of the games that year as well. So fun to see that. Glad that it ultimately went Iowa's way. But the big what if will always be if Ricky Santee didn't get injured, does Iowa survive those other two games and make it to a BCS game, the national championship game? Maybe. I mean, they were ranked fourth, I believe, at that point when they lost to Northwestern. There was still an opportunity for them to make it to a national championship game.

So that'll always be one of the great what-ifs. But regardless, it'll always be one of the best Iowa football teams in the history of the program. Coming up on segment number three, I want to break down where some of the Iowa football players are currently projected to land in the NFL draft that begins next Thursday. So we'll be taking a look at some of the mock drafts that have been out there on the interwebs the past couple of days. We are back for our third and final segment of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. And as I tease, we are going to be talking about some of the mock drafts. So I pulled out four mock drafts that I value the people's opinions from.

We have Kyle Krabs and Trevor Sikama from the Draft Network. Trevor Sikama is also from the Locked On NFL Draft podcast on the Locked On Sports Network. Kyle Krabs is from the Draft Dudes podcast on the Locked On Sports Network. Kyle Krause is from the Drafted Dudes podcast on the Locked On Sports Network. We also have Matt Miller. If you've listened to the show, I'm a huge fan of Matt Miller from the Bleacher Report. He also runs the Stick to Football podcast. And then we also have Dane Brugler from The Athletic.

If you are not subscribed to The Athletic, you absolutely should be. It is a fantastic source of great journalism. So I absolutely love following The Athletic as well. So let's start with Dane Brugler. He put together a seven round mock draft, very aggressive. And obviously the point of looking at these and analyzing these is just to give you some thoughts about where, if I think that's high or low for the players, and then also to give you an idea of kind of where they're projected to go. So the first interest in this that stood out to me about Brugler's mock draft

is that Nate Stanley was not on it. He is not drafted according to Dane. He did have Tristan Wirfs going fourth to the Giants, AJ Epineza going 36th to the Giants as well, Michael Ojemudia going at 131 in the fourth round of the Cardinals, and Geno Stone going at 145 to the1 in the fourth round of the Cardinals and Geno Stone going at 145 to the Eagles in the fourth. So a couple things here. That was probably the closest I've seen Ojemudia and Stone ranked in terms of draft projections. I've typically actually seen

Ojemudia kind of jump up into the third round and not fall into the fourth nearly as much as of late. and not fall into the fourth nearly as much as of late. For me, I think Ojemudia will likely go in the fourth, but I don't think it's unrealistic to expect him to go as high as middle of the third simply because he is a senior. He played at the Senior Bowl. As I talked about on the show before, guys who have had more exposure are going to have the benefit of the doubt versus juniors who might have declared early or people with question marks.

Ojemudia's only question mark is, can he play man coverage? And I think in this senior bowl, he did a great job of showing that he could play man coverage if given a little bit more time to operate in that system. Worf's at four to the Giants. I think people are heavily projecting this, but based off what I'm reading from Dave Gettleman and what I've learned about him is that he kind of shows the tea leaves of what he's going to do. And it sounds like they're really excited about Isaiah Simmons. I just don't see them going worse at four. Unless for some reason, Isaiah Simmons is off the board at three to the Lions or someone trades up to get Isaiah

Simmons, which I don't see happening either. I think the Giants are in a great position to trade back and still possibly get Isaiah Simmons. So I just don't see Wirfs at four to the Giants, but could happen. Epineza at 36 to the Giants, I could see that happening. It just depends on what that scheme fit is going to be. Joe Judge is the new head coach.

He comes from the Patriots. What does their new defensive coordinator run, though? I'm not sure how that that's going to work but I do think Epineza does fall somewhere between that 23 to 37 range he's a guy who you know although he's falling down draft board because he doesn't meet all the pass rushing thresholds I do think he could be a guy who could be a high impact player at the next level so getting him in the top of the second will be a huge get for the Giants. Now let's look at Matt Miller's rankings. He didn't necessarily project them from a draft pick perspective, but did rank them.

I thought they were kind of interesting. He had Nate Stanley as his eighth best quarterback. He's been pretty high on Stanley from a, he could be a developmental type of guy, and he actually ranked Nate Stanley as his biggest sleeper. And I think that's very valid. Nate Stanley is a guy who has a high ceiling and a relatively high floor, given the situation he came out of from Iowa, understanding pro-style offenses, understanding how to read defenses.

That's huge for quarterbacks. That's a huge step that he's already taken in his development and growth. And as long as he improves his accuracy, as it sounds like he's been working on over the past couple months he could be a guy who could develop behind a quarterback and become a a solid spot starter or even a quality average backup or sorry quality average starter um he had epineza's third for interior defensive line and listed as the best best pass rusher i think that's interesting the classification from interior defensive line. People who want to list Epineza as a defensive end consider the fact that defensive end is a

broad grouping, and where Epineza plays is not going to be the same spot as where Iter Gross Matos plays, for example. Tristan Wirfs listed as the second best tackle in the class and the best zone blocker. Makes sense given Iowa's scheme I'm not not concerned about him being ranked second it kind of depends on what your taste in tackles is where you have him ranked Ojemudia ranked 26th I thought that was probably the most surprising for me didn't expect him to be that low and then Geno Stone ranked 13th so not bad all around moving on to Trevor Sikama's mock draft. It was a first round, second round, and third round mock draft, I believe. Tristan Wirfs was at 10 to the Browns. To me, this is interesting considering the capital the Browns have invested in the offensive line position.

But getting a guy like Tristan Wirfs, a versatile guy, you're really just beefing up that offensive line. You want to run the ball like they want to. I mean, they just traded for Andy Janovich. They got Nick Chubb. They got a couple other guys on that team that can really pound the rock. You put Tristan Werf in there. Even if he can't play tackle right away, put him at guard as a rookie, and you could have a very, very good offensive line, especially from a running perspective and a block for Baker Mayfield. He also had AJ Epineza going 23 to the Patriots. I don't see AJ Epineza going that early to the Patriots.

I could see the Patriots sliding back in the draft a bit, depending on where some of the other players are. So if there's a linebacker available, a middle linebacker available that they think is going to last to the Ravens, you might be able to get by with sliding back past the Ravens and still picking up Epineza and picking up some draft picks if that is the top guy on your list. Epineza just seems like a Patriot, but 23 is one of the higher projections I've seen him at as of recently. And I think if you're the Patriots and there's some other guys on the board, a wide receiver, a quarterback that drops,

one of the middle linebackers, I think people are going to be clamoring to get up there. And so you might have an opportunity to drop back three or four spots and still pick up your guy. And then Kyle Krabs, just to sum up with his mock draft, he put together a seventh round mock draft. I thought this was pretty great to see. I thought it fit pretty well where I expected Iowa players to go. He had Werfs at eight Arizona. I think that's about the range that Wirfs will go, but I've heard from a lot of NFL draft analysts that Arizona is very much in love with Derek Brown, and we're just not sure how much they value the offensive line under

Cliff Kingsbury. He had Epines at 27 to the Lions. He's predicting a trade up for the Lions. That also doesn't surprise me. I don't think it'll be that much money to get up there. You still get that first round option, the fifth round or the fifth year option, excuse me, if you were to get Epineza in the first round. That would be, I believe, right above the Ravens too. So if the Ravens don't have a middle linebacker on the board they want, they could be going Epineza. You want to trade up to get Epineza at 27. That could be a possibility. Ojemudia going in the fourth to the Bills, just continuing that

Iowa train with Nick Easley and Ike Bucker there. And then Geno Stone at 160 to the Colts in the fifth. I think that Colts secondary is up and coming, but there's still some weaknesses there. Geno Stone would be a fantastic asset to that team and probably could be a starter

from day one. The Colts have done a great job of drafting recently, drafting guys who are just good freaking football players. So I think Geno Stone would be a great fit there. And then they have Nate Stanley at 219 in the seventh to the Vikings. That actually seems, I mean, ideally you want a backup quarterback who kind of meshes with your starting quarterback and I think Nate Stanley would be a great guy to develop behind Kirk Cousins even though they just signed Kirk Cousins for a little bit longer but think about the Ravens where they have Lamar Jackson and RG3 that's two running quarterbacks they want to have quarterbacks when they come in they don't have to completely change the offense so I think

Nate Stanley would be a great fit there but that'll wrap it up with our mock draft talk we'll continue some of this discussion next week as well as we get closer to draft time and some of the finalized mock drafts come out and we hear some more rumors and whatnot from GMs and NFL teams around the around the country to kind of see where people might be falling. But basically, it sounds like Wirfs is a lock for the top 10. Epineza is a lock to go between 25 and 35, in my personal opinion. And we got Ojemudia probably third or fourth, Stone fourth or fifth, and Stanley sixth or seventh. The other guys are likely priority undrafted free agents.

So again, thank you for tuning into today's episode of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. On Friday morning show, we're going to continue our discussion about the 2009 Iowa football team with a few other things. We're going to be talking about Kathleen Doyle and the WNBA draft and likely doing a few other fun segments that you'll enjoy for that show. So if you haven't already, make sure to like, review, and subscribe. And I know we have not a lot of specific live sports going on, but there's a lot of draft talk happening right now. So make sure, like I said, tune into the Locked On NFL podcast,

their mock draft special. And also make sure to check out Chad Ford's NBA Big Board, a new series we have on the Locked On Sports Network. Chad Ford is one of the best insiders in the NBA, former ESPN guy who is doing some great work on the Locked On Sports Network. And that's where you can start seeing if Luka Garza is rising up draft boards, if Joe Wieskamp is a guy who we should be worrying about and start looking at some of those things happening

on the NBA draft landscape. So make sure to check out that show as well if you need some additional podcasts to listen to. Again, thank you all for tuning in. Thank you for following us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thank you for all the interactions. And as always, please, please, please be safe out there, Hawkeye Nation. Love and appreciate your support no matter what. And let's go Hawks. We'll be you next time.